scrapbook-ortunities
by broken halleluiah
Summary: Dipper and Mabel start high school a year early. Mabel hands out stickers. Dipper plays chess. They meddle in each other's love lives and grow up without noticing it. Short snapshots from the future of Mabel's scrapbook.
1. summer after 7th grade

**Hi, everybody. I was really hesitant to write and post a fic about Dipper and Mabel growing up while the series was still running, but I couldn't help myself. If anything big happens in the coming seasons that renders this future inaccurate, consider it an AU. As of right now, I think it fits with canon.**

**This will follow Dipper and Mabel from the beginning of ninth grade to their high school graduation. It will cover the events they think are noteworthy and skip the boring stuff in between. It may skip months at random. It may be the product of a sleep-deprived college freshman's mind. I just really wanted to ****realistically ****explore their twin bond as they get older and that includes observing *cough cough* the Westermarck effect. Sorry-not-sorry, that side of the fandom. Enjoy :)**

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><p>The one thing that Dipper knows is that he will not survive the eighth grade.<p>

It's not the cliques or the social anxiety or the locker combination that had worried him before the start of seventh grade- after all, when you've spent the past two summers battling gnomes and dream demons and Gideon, the spawn of nightmares, none of that normal stuff is really so mysterious or terrifying anymore.

His only problem is that _none of that normal stuff is mysterious or terrifying anymore. _Dipper picks at the food on his plate, stares out the window, and thumbs through the journal absently. Normal life must march on, come the end of August.

Mr. and Mrs. Pines exchange a lot of worried glances, followed by a lot of worried phone calls to the school district. After dinner, they "just need to talk to Dipper for a minute". Mabel lies on the living room carpet and pokes Waddles in his jiggling blubber. She watches the closed door and hums to herself for half an hour.

Dipper comes out eventually and sits on the couch, leg jittering at a million miles an hour. "So…" he begins.

"A needle pulling thread," Mabel says.

"They want me to take an entrance exam. To ninth grade." He kicks the couch faster. "And I'm not sure about it, but I said I would try… just for grins."

"Skipping to high school?! Way to go, broseph! You'll get it. You're like, one-hundred percent genius or something!" Mabel throws her arms around his neck.

Dipper smiles sheepishly. "It'd be cool… but really weird… I mean…"

Mabel clears her throat and lets go of her brother. "Yeah. Um, a little weird. Different, like, schools..."

Waddles snorts. Mabel goes back to poking him. Dipper's leg bounces.

"Hey, if you don't mind, I think I'll ask Mom and Dad if I can take a shot at the test, too," Mabel says after a long time. "You know… just for grins. I'm sure I won't be able to-"

"No! Go for it! You definitely should!" Dipper bites his lip immediately. Mabel has friends going into the eighth grade. Dipper mostly has Mabel.

Mabel boops his nose and skips back in search of their parents.

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><p>That night, the Pines parents spend a lot of time arguing with each other and themselves.<p>

Mom never wanted to separate them. In the nursery, preschool, summer camp, ever. If Mabel could move up, too, that would be wonderful.

Dad insists that his baby girl better could not spend one less second in big baggy sweaters and Mary Janes than she wanted. She had better not grow up in high school. If that meant splitting them up so that she didn't hold Dipper back academically, so be it.

Mrs. Pines bites her fingernails, because they just might fall over dead without each other.

They finally agree to just wait and see how the test goes, and go to bed praying for opposites.

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><p>When Dipper walks to the bathroom at one AM the night before the test, a light is glowing under Mabel's door. He turns the knob silently and sees her face planted on her desk, drool running onto the open biology textbook he's checked out from the library for recreational reading. Dipper tucks a pillow under her cheek to protect the page and turns off the light. His feet feel heavy as he slips out again.<p>

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><p>"BOOM, BABY! I passed the eighth grade in a single day!" Mabel screams, grabbing Dipper by the elbow and spinning around in some deranged polka. "High school, get ready for the Mystery Twins! Oh yeah! We are the smartest people in the <em>entire <em>universe!"

Dipper has placed into the eleventh grade. But there are bags under Mabel's eyes for the first time he can remember.

"Freshman year, here we come!" he replies.

Their parents breathe a huge sigh of relief.

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading! This first chapter's mostly setting up for the rest of the story, but I have big plans... *evil laugh* Big plans...<strong>


	2. first day of 9th grade

**Chapter 2!**

**By necessity, there are original characters that live in this story. I do not demand that you love them. XD Dipper and Mabel can't exactly go to high school in a vacuum, though, can they?**

**The other residents of Gravity Falls will make appearances, but it might not be until later on. Enjoy! :)**

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><p>On their first day of sixth grade, Dipper gave Mabel a list of things not to do. As all of Dipper's lists, it was detailed, methodical, and incredibly overbearing. <em>Don't pull any live animals out of your sleeves. Don't pretend like you know sign language in class. Don't tell toddler stories about either of us. Don't eat anything that isn't edible. Don't hug me in front of my friends. Or yours.<em>

_DON'T EMBARRASS ME._

On their first day of ninth grade, as a flood of bodies pour around them in the front hallway, Mabel reaches for Dipper's hand.

He's glad she's there, too.

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><p>The girl who sits behind Dipper in first hour Biology can't see the blackboard past his giant baseball-capped head. To her, this is a portent that high school, like middle school, will be an ever-accelerating sequence of horrors. She doodles in the margins of her notes, just wanting to get this day over with.<p>

No. This is a new year, and she does not have to be the same mousy girl that barely squeaked by in eighth grade. It's not until the lecture ends that she gathers her nerve, pushes her glasses up on her nose, and taps Dipper's shoulder.

"Sorry, but I can't see anything." He turns around, and for a moment she is afraid she didn't really speak at all, or at least not loud enough for him to hear, because he just blinks at her.

"Man, I'm sorry." He ducks down to the left so she can copy down the last of the notes. "Hey, um, do you have a lab partner yet?"

She shakes her head quickly. Too quickly. Her glasses slide down her nose again.

"I'm Dipper."

"Alexis."

Dipper thinks her face looks a little sunburned. It was a boiling hot summer south of Gravity Falls, after all.

He asks about the doodles on her notebook page, which are all of the Eiffel Tower, the Sears Tower, London Bridge. She wants to be an architect. They small talk for the rest of the class period, and Dipper is proud of himself for not stammering or sweating profusely. The same cannot be said for her.

When the bell rings, he carries her books to her locker, which is right next to his, as it turns out.

"Can I get your number?" Dipper asks as he turns his own lock. "We could get together sometime and work on that first project. If you wanna get ahead."

Alexis smiles widely. "Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great! I mean, if you want." She can hear her friends giggling at her across the hall. They are never going to let her live this down.

A picture comes loose from the inside of his locker door and flutters to the ground. Alexis picks it up and then hesitates, staring at the redheaded girl who is winking out of a wallet-size portrait. She coughs and hands it back to him.

"Your, um, your girlfriend's really pretty," she stammers.

"Oh, that's not my girlfriend," Dipper says, shoving the picture into his pocket.

Alexis bites her lip before '_good_' slips out.

And then a mass of pink and brown careens down the hall and into Dipper, squealing and laughing. "I have just had the most INCREDIBLE first fifty minutes of high school, and I can't wait to tell you all about it! What do you have next? I have English. My locker's down there. Have you made any friends yet? I drew Waddles! Let's eat lunch together! I love you."

The girl never pauses to breathe. She pecks Dipper's cheek and then turns and waves at Alexis with a big smile. "Hi." And then she is disappearing down the hall, sticker-covered backpack knocking into pedestrians on all sides.

Dipper rolls his eyes, wiping his cheek. The locker beside him slams, and when he turns to talk to Alexis again, she is gone.

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><p>In eighth hour Algebra, Alexis sticks her head into her backpack, pretending to look for something. Dipper sits down beside her anyway, pulling the brown-haired girl over, too.<p>

"Hey, sorry I didn't get to introduce you guys earlier," he says. "Alexis, this is my sister Mabel."

"Your glasses are beautiful," Mabel gasps, wonderstruck, reaching for Alexis's face. "Can I try them on?"

Alexis laughs uneasily. "It's good to meet you," she whispers, and her sunburned face only flushes redder.

Her friends tease her about this for the rest of the year.


	3. playing cupid

**Chapter three! I wasn't able to get this one perfectly the way I wanted it, but it's just time to move on. :) Thanks to Shabbadoo and StkAmbln for the reviews and favorites!**

**Friendly reminder that I rated this story T even though it's been very K up to this point... But let's all be honest, high school was T-rated.**

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><p>The rule is that Dipper has to participate in at least one extracurricular activity. He tries to weasel his way out of making a decision for the first week, because he's just skipped a grade and has a lot of reading to catch up on. But Mrs. Pines pries the textbook out of his hands and repeats the phrase <em>social interaction<em>. Dipper hears _let's not repeat middle school, shall we?_

He eventually settles on chess club. Chess club is safe. Dipper tries to convince his lunch table mate Aaron to give it a whirl, because lunch table mates are really all but true friends. Aaron informs him around a mouthful of roast beef sandwich that, no offense, but he'd rather drown in acid.

The other rule is that Mabel has to limit herself to just three extracurricular activities every semester, because given the opportunity she would spread herself as flat as a pancake. She flips through the lists she's made frantically, again and again, and _again_, before she can bring herself to narrow her options down. "Show choir, 4H with Waddles, and knitting club."

"There isn't a knitting club," Dipper says absently.

"Oh, but _there shall be!_" Mabel jots down a formal request that she can take to her principal. "You know, Dipper, you have to stick your neck out there if you want to find true love in high school."

"Because that's why the government funds institutions of education," Dipper mutters.

Alexis thinks that chess club sounds like tons of fun when he mentions it to her, offhandedly.

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><p>Mr. and Mrs. Pines worry that some of Mabel's old habits will have to die hard in high school. But she still gleefully hands out Valentines five months early, puts up encouraging cat posters around school, and gives out hugs to strangers or teachers who seem to need them. It doesn't take long for Mabel to become something of a glitter-sprinkling legend in the freshman class. And by day three, she is surrounded almost constantly by a variety of members of the male species, much to Dipper's bewilderment.<p>

Not that he's doing too poorly in that arena. But most of the girls Dipper talks to end up wandering over to Mabel later on and whispering questions to her. She'll laugh and whisper back and then they'll all turn and stare at him. By the second week, Dipper is downright concerned.

"You're saying positive things, right?" he asks in the lunch line on their second Tuesday.

"Bro, I got you. Watch. I'm gonna sit with these sophomores and talk you up the whole time. Here comes Cupid. _Womp!_" She shoves Dipper, almost causing him to spill his soup all over himself, and takes a seat with total strangers. "Now you go and do likewise for me!"

"Uh… wait, you don't have to…" Dipper gives up and edges away, peeking back over his shoulder at the older girls, whose eyes are all turned on him now. He laughs anxiously and takes a seat with some boys from his World History class.

"Mabel's putting me on the market…" he says to Aaron, who eats a roast beef sandwich every single day and is starting to grow hair in strange places. "This will either begin or end my life."

"She's something else," Aaron whispers, wide-eyed. Maybe a bit afraid.

Dipper laughs, then coughs, remembering his deal with Mabel. "No, um, seriously, guys. Mabel's great."

"I'll say. Hey, just out of curiosity, does she always wear those big sweaters?" a boy named Doug from the basketball team asks. He's short, but bulky, and they've never really talked. Dipper nods absently.

"Man, what a waste. What do they look like?" Doug's eyes are fixed like a hawk across the room. "Have you seen them before?"

"Who?" Dipper asks, eyes shifting uncomfortably back to his sister.

"Her boobs."

Dipper chokes on a soggy piece of potato. ""Excuse me?"

There is a murmur of disapproval around the table. Aaron spits his mouthful of sandwich into his napkin. "Gross, man, that's his sister!"

Doug shrugs innocently. "I'm just asking. She's gotta let 'em hang sometimes at home, right?"

"Oh my _gosh_." Dipper pushes his tray away. "We shared a womb, and I am _not_ talking about this."

"Why not? You got something you don't wanna tell the group?" Doug takes a long drag of soda. "No shame, man. I would tap that, too."

"Your own twin? Really?" Aaron asks, morbidly intrigued by this new low in his most desperate of classmates.

Dipper stands up abruptly, chair screeching on the tile floor. "Okay, she's my sister, and she's not a piece of meat, and I _swear_ I'm not going to listen to you talk like that again!"

Too late he realizes he's still brandishing his plastic spoon like a weapon, so he quickly backs away and deposits the rest of his lunch in the trash with trembling hands. A table full of wide-eyed freshmen continue to shovel food into their mouths, studiously avoiding eye contact with one another.

"I was kidding," Doug grumbles, giving an uneasy laugh. "Geez."

"He wasn't," Aaron whispers.

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><p>"Dipper loves kittens. And Icelandic pop sensation Babba. He cries at chick flicks and sometimes brings me candy when I'm sad. I'm sorry to report that he can't grow a mustache yet, and he doesn't have any supernatural powers that I'm aware of. But I think that's all forgivable. Basically, ladies, my brother has got the complete package."<p>

These sophomores have never been so thoroughly entertained during an otherwise mundane lunch period. Three of them ask for Dipper's number before the day's end, which is flattering but ultimately goes nowhere. He's not so interested in older women anymore.

After eighth hour Algebra, Mabel stands at her locker and waits for the usual flood of friends. She has scratch-and-sniff stickers to hand out, because it's a Tuesday. Aaron takes a step towards Mabel's locker, then turns and flees as Dipper approaches.

"Where did my boys go?" Mabel asks the echoing, emptying hallway.

Dipper drags the toe of his sneaker across a scuff mark on the floor. "Let's go home."

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><p>In the end, it comes down to whether Dipper is more intimidating than Mabel is charming. There is no contest, and by Friday, Mabel's locker is a hotspot for loitering males once again.<p>

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading! I'm really excited to post some of the following chapters :) Drop a review if you're enjoying, or if you have constructive criticism!<strong>


	4. mabel deals with conflict

**Longest chapter yet! Woot woot! :)**

**Mild language. Moderate tear-jerky-ness. You've been warned. *sniffle***

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><p>Dipper can hear Mabel snoring behind him in algebra. The sound grates on him more than if she were to run her fingernails down the entire length of the chalkboard. With a grand, martyr-like sigh, he sticks the eraser end of his pencil into her ear and watches her lurch forward in her seat.<p>

"The Battle of Waterloo!" Mabel shouts, in answer to a question that hasn't been asked. The bell rings, interrupting the laughter of her classmates.

"You do know we have a test tomorrow," Dipper tells her as he gathers his things. "Not the best time to be napping."

"I know. I was up all night helping Melissa plan her birthday party. It's gonna be off the hook!" Mabel pumps her fist, then yawns and rubs her eyes. Dipper has never even heard of Melissa.

"I'll help you study tonight," he says flatly.

"We can all study together," Alexis puts in, even though she has never needed to study math a day in her life.

"I can't! We're having an emergency session of the knitting club after school to get our Christmas sweaters ready before break," Mabel says. "Charity and Renee begged me. You know, Dipper, it's a lot of work being friends with everybody."

"You can't be friends with everyone," Dipper says. "You literally cannot do that, and you're gonna pull something trying."

"Well, maybe not _everyone _can be friends with everyone," Mabel says, trying to be delicate. She's seen the dirty looks and shoves that a couple of the basketball players give Dipper in the hall. "But so far, I have a perfect record, and I plan to keep it that way."

Dipper rolls his eyes.

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><p>Mabel's knitting club has proven a huge success. Over a dozen girls and a few reluctant boyfriends have turned up with a shiny new pair of needles to await Sensei Mabel's instruction. With Christmas rapidly approaching, she has her pupils knitting slightly deformed reindeer amid crooked stripes of red and green.<p>

"These are masterpieces," she says with a glowing smile. "They deserve to be displayed for the world to marvel at!"

Mabel paces over to the bulletin board in the art room, which is bordered by rainbow stars and the word _fantastic. _The board itself contains a thumb-tack pointillism image that depicts, in excruciating detail, a woman with a single tear trailing down her face.

"This depresses me," Mabel says.

"It's been up for, like, two years," one of her protégés informs her. "Ever since I started here. It gives everybody nightmares."

Mabel tips the bulletin board forward, and the thumb-tacks clatter to the floor, creating a minefield of sharp points on the tile.

"It's time for smiles to reign supreme!" she cries.

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><p>"I <em>cannot<em> believe you!"

The tall girl storms down the hall and slams Mabel's locker shut in front of her face. "That took me weeks. Literally weeks. And some hotshot freshman thinks she can tear it down in a split second to display some… _thrift store fodder_ for an ugly Christmas sweater contest!"

"You must be Brittany. The pointillism girl. Hi. You're so talented. I'm a big fan." Mabel extends her hand in a friendly gesture that is ignored. "I'm really sorry about tearing down your picture. I'd be happy to help you recreate it, like, at your house. It's just that the bulletin board is for _everyone_ to express themselves, and your art had been up for years. I think it's time to give someone else a turn, don't you?"

Brittany snorts through her nose, muttering a string of profanity. "You've got to be kidding." She pokes Mabel right in the middle of the glowing Rudolph nose on her sweater. "You really think I'm falling for it? You may have everyone singing your retarded cheerful little tune, but I know what you're really like. You manipulative little poser. I'm gonna make sure everyone knows it, too!"

She storms away, a couple of friends echoing her sentiments and flipping Mabel the bird.

Mabel waves good-bye and calls out that they'll have to talk more later. After all, an enemy is just a friend who momentarily hates you.

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><p>Mabel researches a lot about dealing with conflict. She spends most of finals week singing <em>We're All in This Together <em>in her bedroom, no matter how loudly Dipper bangs on the wall. She learns all five harmony parts to Kumbaya and the only thing that remains is to edit together a recording of herself singing all of them.

In the final part of her plan, Mabel sits down with Brittany at lunch and presents her with the most accurate knitted representation of her pointillist image that she could render in a sweater. Mabel apologizes again and then they talk about their feelings and Brittany cries and begs forgiveness for the rumors she's been spreading. They hug again, and Mabel prides herself on a job well done.

"I guess I'll just have to find some other way to express myself," Brittany murmurs, dabbing at her mascara. She tears up the napkin with trembling fingers.

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><p>After school, Mabel opens her locker and her eyes immediately widen. She slams the door shut again and edges in front of it, her heart pounding like a jackhammer. "Nothing a little color won't fix," she whispers to herself.<p>

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><p>"It looks like Lisa Frank threw up in your locker," Dipper states, staring up at the intricate mosaic of stickers in mingled fear and wonder.<p>

"Thanks." Mabel continues loading up her backpack, unfazed.

"You know you aren't supposed to use anything but magnets in the lockers."

Mabel laughs. "Pfff! Like they ever enforce that dumb rule! I once saw a kid with a live gecko in his locker, and that wasn't hurting anything. What's the harm in a sticker of thirteen geckos?"

Dipper decides to save his arguing points for something he cares about.

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><p>The twelfth time Mabel is hounded to take down her sticker mural, it is already February, and Miss Kravinski actually pulls her out of study hall to supervise the clean-up. The tight-lipped teacher stands and watches, cross-armed, until Mabel gives in and begins peeling them off one by one. Down come puppies, kittens, flowers, unicorns, and the occasional Hanukah dreidel.<p>

"See, that isn't so hard to get off now. But if you tried again at the end of the year, after moisture's set in, it could take hours."

Mabel sighs. "I grudgingly see your point, ma'am."

"What's this?" Mrs. Kravinski runs a finger along a section of newly-exposed metal inside the locker door. There is a dark line cut into it, as if it has been carved. As more stickers fall away, the word _Mabel _is revealed. Followed by _Pines. _Followed by _is._

Followed by Mrs. Kravinski gasping and grabbing Mabel's shoulder.

"Do you know who did this?"

She shrugs. "I argued with some people but it was ages ago. We're good friends again."

" Mabel, you should have reported this when it first happened."

Mabel shakes her head seriously. "Miss K, I fervently believe in making love, not war."

Miss Kravinski opens and shuts her mouth like she wants to address this remark, but then thinks better of it. "Sweetheart, I can't help you unless you give me some idea who did this."

In the end, Miss K leaves Mabel to her cleaning, promising to do some investigating into the matter, despite Mabel's plea to the contrary.

"Do you need a poster to cover it until we get it repaired?"

"No, I've got plenty."

Mabel spends the rest of her study hall period in the empty hallway, humming cheerfully to herself as she scrapes away sticky gunk and tosses the ruined stickers, the majority, into the trash. She is left staring at a gray metal door with crude, twisted letters carved into it.

_Mabel Pines is a bitch._

She slides down to the floor, pulls her turtleneck up over her head, and cries until the bell rings.

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><p><strong>Ahhhhhhh. I almost didn't post this chapter because it hurt my heart to write. Mabel's gonna be okay, guys, but I guess not everybody will love her... crazy, isn't it?<strong>

**Alexis will be important in the next chapter. I promise I haven't forgotten about her.**

**Thanks for reading! Drop a review please! :)**


	5. summer after 9th grade

**I meant for each of these chapters to be stand-alone stories, but this one kind of took on a life of its own, and it'll be continued in the next couple installments. Enjoy!**

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><p>The countdown to summer vacation has officially begun, and Mabel has fallen in love with first dates. She's gone out with almost a dozen guys since Christmas, and seriously, no one told her what a complete joy free ice cream and movies could be, especially in the company of boys who were various degrees of nervous and adorable. Dipper hardly blinks at the latest shaggy-haired fellow to carpool with them in the back of their parents' minivan.<p>

"It's good to meet you…?"

"Brandon."

"Brandon." He's never going to remember that.

Mabel's made a name for herself as that one girl who will always say yes to a first date, and never to a second. The first and only exception comes the afternoon that she's tie-dying new rainbow jerseys for the boy's basketball team while they shoot around in the gym. Doug the point guard sidles up beside Mabel and compliments her work with an appraising grin. He's taken off his shirt, for good measure, and Mabel knows he's a sophomore and he probably has a car and sweet Moses when did they turn off the air conditioning in here? Somebody needs to look into that.

Doug applauds himself because it's all going so well, right up until Mabel glances down to read a text on her phone. When she looks up again, she seems to make eye contact with somebody up on the second floor balcony, where the pep band is practicing. By the time Doug turns his head, though, everyone is playing again, nothing out of the ordinary. It's just nerves, that's all. He takes a deep breath and goes for it.

"Sorry," Mabel says, smiling apologetically. "I don't think I'm interested. Thanks, though."

Doug is now officially the first person that Mabel has rejected, and he won't be able to stop that news from spreading all over school. He doesn't know how, but it's Dipper's fault, and God as his witness, he's going to break that worthless turd over one knee when he gets the chance.

"I thought you said she was easy!" Doug vents in the locker room, slamming his door hard enough to startle his teammates.

Brandon and Austin and Jacob and Daniel don't look up, because getting over Mabel will be one of the hardest things they ever have to do.

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><p><em>Dude, I can hear him cussing me out from here. And I thought girls were supposed to be two-faced. <em>

Dipper reads the text from his sister, hiding his phone behind the giant sousaphone that also shielded him from the hateful eyes of Doug.

_I got your back, _he replies.

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><p>Dipper and Alexis have had many opportunities to pick new lab partners in biology, but they work so well together. Dipper has seen enough gross weird stuff in his life that he doesn't really mind doing the dissections. Alexis takes meticulous notes in tiny, neat handwriting that sort of makes Dipper's stomach flip. He likes working with her.<p>

He _doesn't_ like losing to her in chess. It's the final tournament of the year, and after taking his queen, Alexis can see his fists clench, the sweat beading on his forehead. Why does he always have to glare at her like that? She considers throwing their final tiebreaker match, but something inside won't let her.

After she declares checkmate, though, Dipper smiles, and she can't breathe.

"Well, have a great summer," he says, tipping the baseball cap that's starting to get a little ragged. "Do you mind if I text you? I'll be out of town all summer, but maybe you could teach me some of those strategies of yours."

"I'll never tell my secrets," Alexis tries to say coyly. Oh gosh, now she's said it too coyly, or not coyly enough, did he know she was joking? "I mean I will. If you ask really nicely. And you should… text me, I mean."

"Cool." Dipper shrugs on his backpack and walks out the door, the light from the hallway enveloping him in a warm glow. "See you in the fall."

"See you," she whispers, long seconds after he is out of earshot.

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><p>The twins waste no time packing for Gravity Falls, Oregon.<p>

On the second day of vacation, Grunkle Stan calls to tell their parents that the Mystery Shack is facing a crippling termite problem and that the upstairs can't bear the weight of visitors at the moment and Soos is actually still stuck halfway through the floor. Then he asks to speak to his niece and nephew. Dipper is busy texting, so Mabel dives for the phone.

"Do you have four thousand dollars?" Stan growls without losing a second. "Within twenty-four hours would be preferable. It doesn't have to _not_ be counterfeit."

"GRUNKLE STAN! I smelled some old man cologne on an old man the other day and it made me think of you!" Mabel immediately launches into the story of her latest ice cream date, complete with a rundown of every flavor on her seventeen scoop Leaning Tower of Heaven.

Stan tries to interrupt, but to no avail. "Mabel, can you put your brother on? No, sweetie, I feel like you don't understand, this is the only phone call I get." He should have tried Soos first, but the termite ruse isn't exactly a lie, and he isn't sure if Wendy's been able to pry him out of the floor with a crowbar yet.

They can't go to Gravity Falls that summer. Mabel goes on more dates and has a bake sale to help fund her uncle's bail. Dipper keeps books open beside him, but he mostly texts.

"I don't remember Aaron having that much to say all the time," Mabel notes as she squirts glitter glue all over her newest creation.

"Yeah. Crazy, huh," Dipper murmurs without looking up.

At the beginning of August, Dipper puts down his phone and rifles through the Journal for the first time in weeks. The rest of his family doesn't know what changed, but they're inexplicably glad.

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><p>On the first day of sophomore year, Alexis drops her notebook in the hallway, and beats Dipper to pick it up before he can see his own name scribbled all over the pages. She turns the long way around to avoid him, face drawn up in a scowl. He watches her go.<p>

"I don't know what happened," Dipper tells his sister later, at home. "She's been giving me the silent treatment ever since we got back from break, and today she requested a new lab partner. I don't know what I did."

"Dipper, Dipper," Mabel chides. "The female mind is a dark labyrinth through which all men need a candle to journey. I shall be your candle."

"Don't- don't be weird about this."

"Okay, retrace your steps. When did you talk to her last?"

"At chess club. I thought we were really good friends. We texted a lot over the summer-"

"_I knew it!_" Mabel crows. She didn't really, but she enjoys saying those words.

"And I was, um, I was starting to think she had a thing for me."

"_Details!_" Mabel crows. "Did she say something, or did you just get that vibe?"

"Okay, she sent this one text that made me think… Let me see." Dipper opens the message on his phone.

Mabel snatches it and reads, "_Hey, I'm sorry if this is out of nowhere, but I had to get something off my chest. I really love talking to you, and I haven't been able to get you out of head all summer. I understand if you don't feel the same. I just had to let you know."_

"Oh- my- GOSH!" She squeals and grabs Dipper's shoulders. "What did you SAY?"

"Um… nothing." Dipper swallows uncomfortably. "It kind of freaked me out."

There is a moment of strained silence.

"WHAT!?" Mabel roars, spit flying in Dipper's face.

"It was only like a week ago, okay? Geez! Plus she said it was fine if I didn't feel the same way!" he protests, pushing her away.

"No. No. You fail at everything. You do realize that this girl has already fantasized about marrying you, right?" Mabel whacks him in the forehead.

"She has?" Dipper's voice cracks, and he coughs to cover it.

"Well, duh! This poor girl put her heart out on the line, and you didn't even give her a decent 'let's just be friends' spiel?"

Dipper shakes his head, feeling guiltier by the minute.

"WHY IN THE NAME OF EVERYTHING THAT IS HOLY NOT? THAT IS SO INCREDIBLY RUDE OF YOU THAT I-"

"Because she's really cool, and I think I might like her too, okay?" Dipper blurts out, face flushing. "But I wasn't sure and I didn't… know…"

Mabel suddenly withdraws and bites her lip.

"I ruined everything, didn't I?" Dipper asks, slumping back into the couch.

"No… of course not," she says delicately. But the labyrinth is suddenly darker than she realized, and Mabel has no idea where her brother could find a brighter candle.

* * *

><p><strong>I sort of love the idea of Mabel giving Dipper love advice... so that'll be happening from time to time. ;) I imagine he stays out of her business for the most part, except when it comes to people that he knows are bad news (like Doug). Stay tuned for the next gripping installment! Dun dun dun! And pretty please review because for every review I will donate a dollar to the getting-Stan-out-of-jail fund. A yuk yuk yuk :)<strong>


	6. soos repairs love

**Thanks for the reviews and favorites, guys! This chapter's kind of short, but... SOOS! :) I love that man child. He writes for himself, I swear.**

* * *

><p>At the beginning of September, the office buzzes Dipper and Mabel to say that they have a visitor for lunch. Soos stands in the doorway, the same question mark t-shirt draped over his huggable girth. The twins embrace him and ask what the occasion is.<p>

"Oh, you know, I was at the grocery store in the middle of the night, and then I just thought to myself, 'Hey, while I'm out, I should go see the Pines twins.'"

Dipper blinks. "It's like an eight-hour drive."

"Yeah, but I was totally, like, stocked up on snacks from the grocery store, so I was good to go."

They lead him to the lunchroom, where he introduces himself to a couple of Mabel's girlfriends, and Dipper's best buddy, Aaron Wolfe.

"Any relation to the Wolves in Gravity Falls, Oregon?" Soos asks conversationally.

"Uh, no?"

Soos laughs to himself. "Well, yeah, I guess probably not, since they're like, werewolves or whatever. Hey, wanna try some pizza that regenerates after you take a bite?"

Aaron excuses himself to get a drink and never comes back.

"So, I'm taking the whole weekend off, guys. After this I'm gonna cruise back another, like, ten hours to see Melody, and we're gonna go to a rodeo or maybe the circus. Someplace with a ton of cotton candy. Wendy's filling in for me."

"Wendy? How _is_ Wendy?" Mabel asks, elbowing Dipper hard because his eyes have drifted across the room to the table where Alexis is sitting. "Is she single? Is she on the market?"

"Uh… I don't really know." Soos scratches his head. "She dyed her hair blond and I keep walking past her when I'm looking for her."

"She _dyed _her _hair?_" Mabel gasps and shakes her brother's shoulder."Dipper, doesn't this outrage and horrify you?"

"Wendy can do what she wants with her hair," Dipper says, distracted.

"They emailed for _months _after we visited last year. And he kept a picture of her in his locker, too. Isn't that adorable?"

"Well, it's not there anymore," Dipper informs both of them. "And we haven't gotten any closer in age than the last time I checked, by the way."

Soos turns to follow Dipper's line of sight across the lunchroom. "Who is this mysterious maiden at which you stare?"

"I'm not staring." Dipper lowers his head to his hands. "She liked me, but I blew it."

Soos suddenly slams a palm on the table, jarring both the twins and Mabel's giggling girlfriends who have entirely tuned out of the conversation. "Yesterday, Dipper, the woman I love video called me and said she was craving cotton candy, so I am gonna drive all night and day to bring it to her. Women are complicated and exotic creatures, and we must follow them to the ends of the _earth_ if it comes to that."

Dipper stammers, "I- she doesn't want cotton candy-"

"But I bet she _does _want to go to a movie," Mabel singsongs.

"But what about the whole text thing? What do I say about that?" He's wringing his hands now.

"Just tell her that you were momentarily terrified by the depth of your emotions for her," Mabel replies. "That gets girls every time. Or say that you love her, but you're afraid that once you start drinking her blood you won't be able to quit."

"Good one," Soos says. "That worked for my cousin Reggie once."

"Okay, I'm probably gonna say the first one because it's a little closer to being true," Dipper mutters.

"The door isn't closed yet, Dipper. But it's closing," Mabel urges.

"You gotta kinda ninja roll through the closing door." Soos rolls his hands over one another. "Dive on your belly if you have to."

"Dive! _Dive!_" Mabel yells. "Man overboard!"

Dipper rolls up his sleeves, pushes back his chair, and strides across the room.

"You did it, Soos. You're the brightest candle of them all." Mabel beams at him.

"I sure hope that kid can swim," Soos says.

* * *

><p>"I'm really sorry I kept you hanging-"<p>

Alexis pushes her glasses up her nose resentfully. "Yeah, that wasn't cool, okay?"

"You made her cry, like, a ton!" a girl with wild curls says, receiving an elbow in the ribs and a _shut up, Shannon_ for her effort. It's Alexis's fault for requesting back-up.

"Believe me, I regret that so much." Dipper rubs his neck. "The truth is, I really like you too and I was nervous that I just… wouldn't be as good a boyfriend as I am lab partner."

"Why not? There's plenty of _chemistry!_" That same girl gets elbowed again. Everybody, it seems, has that one friend who inspires Mabel-level irritation.

Alexis turns back to Dipper. "Look, that's really sweet. I just wish you would have said something weeks ago. I totally just thought that you-"

"Can I take you to dinner?" Dipper asks abruptly. "I mean, I don't have my license yet, but my mom could drop us off after school and we could walk around downtown, and there's this documentary about ancient architecture playing in theaters right now and I know you want to be an engineer and, God, this sounds a lot lamer than it did in my head…"

He trails off because Alexis is smiling, and that glint in her eye isn't just the reflection on her glasses.


	7. dipper's date

**Hi everybody! This chapter ties in with the previous chapter as part of the same mini-story. I probably could have made it one chapter, but hey, shorter chapters, more updates! :)**

**Thanks for the reviews! I really appreciate your feedback! Dipper and Mabel are 15 and sophomores in high school. I realized that the time frame was getting confusing. I mean, I was confusing myself, so I could only imagine what the readers were going through! I'll try to keep you updated on that.**

* * *

><p>"Could you believe that guy said aliens were a valid explanation for Stonehenge?" Alexis's face flushes with the madness of it all. "Let me tell you something, if I were making a historical documentary, it would be based on facts and not crazy hypotheses."<p>

"Yeah, that was… kinda weird," Dipper agrees. They are walking out of the theater on their very first date, and how has the conversation already turned to this? There are a lot of things you don't discuss with a girl on a first date, and he's pretty sure the paranormal is one of them.

"That's what I like about math. And sciences that aren't hypothetical. You know what's true and what isn't and you don't have to waste your time on crazy ideas," she continues.

The stars are peeking out overhead, not quite blotted by the downtown lights. The weight of Journal # 3 swings in Dipper's backpack as he walks. The shadow of her skirt twirls under the streetlight. Under the dark eyeliner she's never worn to school, intelligence sparks in her eyes. He wants nothing more than to agree with her, on this and everything else. But if he keeps his mouth shut about some things from the beginning, he may have to keep it shut forever.

"I know what you mean. I really like things to make sense, too…" Dipper says slowly. "But… do you remember being a kid, and pretty much anything was possible?"

"Um, I guess?" Alexis fiddles with her necklace, smiling nervously.

"I don't want to lose that. Like, ever. I mean, I thought it would be impossible to get you to go out with me but… maybe impossible things are just mysteries we haven't solved yet."

Alexis's smile softens. "I've never met anybody like you," she says.

He reaches for her hand.

* * *

><p>"Details! I need details! You kissed, didn't you? Oh my gosh, I can totally tell! Your face is all red."<p>

Dipper sheds his jacket at the door and shakes his head, grinning.

"Did you make out?" Mabel squeals.

"I am _not_ telling you about this," Dipper insists.

"Dipperrrrr," Mabel whines, tossing her knitting to the ground. "You have to tell somebody! You'll go mad with joy otherwise!"

"I think I'll be okay." Dipper smirks, hugs Mabel, and retreats down the hall to his room, where he paces until long after midnight. He finally plucks his phone off the nightstand and scrolls through his contacts until he reaches Soos's name.

_I kissed her, _he texts.

Dipper paces for another ten minutes. The phone dings, and he opens the new message, heart still pounding.

_Way to go, Dude!_ _:) :) :) :) :)_

Dipper stares at those four words and five smiley faces for an hour and a half before his eyes finally drift shut.

* * *

><p>At the beginning of winter, Dipper leans against Mabel's door frame and clears his throat not-so-casually until she turns down her deafening music.<p>

"Alexis just texted me, _so are we dating or not?_ And I'm really confused because we've been going on dates for two months. I think."

"_Dates_ aren't the same thing as _dating_," Mabel says wisely. Dipper blinks, so she continues. "Did you ever ask her to be your girlfriend?"

"Not in those exact words…"

"Did you put it on Facebook?"

"Um…"

"She's _at least _in your profile picture, right?"

Dipper shakes his head. "Okay, I get the idea."

"You've been going on dates all summer, but you didn't get her anything for your one or two month anniversaries, therefore rendering that time invalid. _BUT- _you're gonna ask her out officially, right?"

"Yeah, I really like her."

"So _now- _hang with me- now you're gonna have to remember two anniversaries. The first time you went out and the day you _officially_ asked her out. Quick, when's your first anniversary?"

"September… something?" Dipper waves his hands in front of his face, trying to block out Mabel's disapproving frown. "Just… give me a minute!"

"And don't forget her birthday. You need to make that at least a week-long affair." Mabel sighs deeply. "Do you need me to make you a color-coded calendar? Don't even answer that. I'm making you a color-coded calendar."

* * *

><p>Dipper stares at the intricate chart, vaguely, dizzily aware that he now has an anniversary every other week.<p>

He wonders if he is way in over his head.


	8. concussion part 1

**Here we go with chapter 8 already! How the time flies! :) This one doesn't entirely revolve around dating, so hooray for that! Back to silly sibling h/c fluff!**

**Dipper and Mabel are still 15 and sophomores in high school.**

**Also, can we take a moment and appreciate that before I posted this, the story had 7 chapters and 7,777 words? I almost edited just to tell you guys, but then realized that would ruin it. :P**

* * *

><p>"Hey, did they ever get your girlfriend's locker fixed?" Doug asks, in the stairwell during the long passing period after lunch.<p>

Dipper tells himself not to turn around. Doug never gives him the time of day anymore unless he wants the world to end. And now that he's dating Brittany, who permanently and irrationally hates Mabel, the world can't seem to end soon enough.

"What are you talking about?" Dipper finally asks, because the mention of Alexis concerns him. They've been officially going out for four months now, unofficially six (to his relief she thought the bi-monthly anniversaries were just as stupid as he did), and he wouldn't mind if she was kept out of this feud. "Nothing's wrong with Alexis's locker."

"Not the blond one. Your other girlfriend. The hot girl. You've gotta stop hogging all the women, dude." Doug leans against the stair railing. "I mean, come on, man. I'd love to do them both at the same time, too, but you gotta share."

Dipper blows air through his lips and turns to leave.

"You mean Mabel never showed you that message from her secret admirer?"

Dipper clenches his fists at his side and tells himself to keep breathing. Keep breathing and just walk away.

He should listen to himself more often.

* * *

><p>Mabel's phone vibrates in the middle of Romeo and Juliet's death scene. As gripping as ill-fated love has always been to her, she finds a moment to glance down at the text message.<p>

_I need you real quick. In the hall by the bathrooms. Bring ice._

Mabel grabs the hall pass and hovers by the door for a minute, hollering, "She's about to wake up, moron!" at Romeo before she darts down to the cafeteria to charm the lunch ladies into giving her a bag of ice. Dipper has teased her for having the name, birthday, and favorite color of every school employee memorized. She snickers because he hasn't found her secret list yet.

"Dipper?" The hallway between the bathrooms is ominously empty. She creeps on tip-toe to the boy's restroom door, cracking it open and sticking just her lips inside. "Psst! Dipper? Is the coast clear? P.S., if this isn't Dipper, then this isn't Mabel."

"Yeah, it's empty, come in."

Dipper's leaning against the sink, pushing back his hair to reveal both his identifying birthmark and the giant goose egg that is rapidly forming on his temple.

"Dang, bro. What happened?" Mabel's eyes narrow. "Don't say Doug. If you say Doug, I swear…"

"Not exactly."

She glares. Dipper winces as she pushes back his hair to make her own inspection of the injury.

"Okay, yeah, he was saying some stuff about… things, and it just crossed the line, and I told him to stop, and he said 'make me', so I twisted his arm like Grunkle Stan showed me that one time, and he started cussing and agreed, and then I… I hit my head."

"He hit you?" Mabel gasps, pressing the ice pack to Dipper's forehead. He sits down on the counter of the sink, too dizzy to stand.

"No, I… I fell down the stairs."

Mabel lets out a short burst of laughter, which is just loud enough to send a slicing pain through Dipper's temple. "You were trying to back away dramatically, weren't you?"

"God, it's not funny, Mabel!" Dipper protests. "I blacked out for a second, and then I threw up in the urinal."

Mabel wrinkles her nose at the smell she had assumed was typical of a guy's restroom. "Standy-uppy toilets are so weird."

"Yeah… okay." Dipper closes his eyes. "I think I have a concussion. Do you think it's a concussion?"

"I can shine the light in your eyes if you want." Mabel pulls out her phone and points the flashlight at Dipper's face. He immediately leans over and pukes in the sink that he's perched beside.

"Awww, bro-bro." Mabel presses her lips together. "I think you need to go to the hospital."

Dipper nods silently and then remembers that makes his headache a billion times worse.

"Do you remember that one time-?"

"Yes," he says.

"When you got possessed at my puppet show and-"

"Did you not hear me say yes?" Dipper groans. "Man, I do _not_ wanna call Mom; she's going to freak out."

"Hang on a sec." Mabel dials with one hand, still holding the ice pack on with the other.

"Don't- don't tell her I fought with Doug."

"Are you kidding? You think I'm gonna tell the heroic story over the embarrassing one?" she teases, then speaks into the phone. "Hi Mom… Dipper fell down the stairs because he's a dork and now he's got a concussion. Can you take him to the hospital? Yeah, I'm fine. I had pizza for lunch. We're watching Shakespeare. No, I'm with him now. He's puking all over the place. Can I come to the ER? I wanna stay with him."

A senior walks into the bathroom and startles at the sight of Dipper, who is green and shaking, and Mabel, bubbly as always. "Um, is everything okay?" he asks, astutely realizing that there is probably a medical emergency happening.

"Yeah, don't mind us," Mabel says as she hangs up. "My brother fell down the stairs. I really admire the fact that you guys can pee while standing up!"

The senior backs out again, slowly. He'll use the bathroom in the other wing.

Dipper dry heaves and then lowers his head between his knees, moaning. His sister hops up on the sink beside him and squeezes his shoulder, gently.

"She'll be here in fifteen minutes," Mabel murmurs. "Hang in there, okay?"

He hangs in there.

* * *

><p>Dipper forgets about his phone in the ER, mostly because looking at the little screen makes him sick and dizzy. He doesn't know about the seventeen texts he's received until Mabel gets several of them from Alexis. <em>Where the heck has your brother been? <em>And a moment later: _Someone said he went to the hospital! Oh my gosh! Mabel! He's not answering me!_

"Did you not tell her you went to the ER?" Mabel asks. Dipper lifts the cloth from his forehead and blinks at the light.

"Tell who?" he asks.

Mabel bites her lip. She types, _He's fine. Just really out of it. He's sorry for not letting you know._

Her phone dings. _He is?_

Mabel types, _He will be. _She erases it before she hits send.

Dipper is _very_ sorry.

"You didn't even _think_ about calling me?"

"Look, I- I just didn't want to bother you…" he lies on the phone that afternoon. The truth was that it had never occurred to Dipper to contact anyone but Mabel. He realizes now how that could potentially hurt her feelings, but he sort of _had a head injury _and wasn't exactly thinking straight at the time.

"Well, I was kind of bothered anyway with wondering if you were _dying_ or something!" Usually Alexis gets quiet when she's mad, so something about the way her voice turns up at the end of the sentence is intimidating. Plus, it sort of makes the phone squeal in his ear. Dipper's head throbs wildly.

"Let me make it up to you," Dipper says. "Why don't you come over to my house for dinner tonight? I can't read or work on homework or do anything but watch cartoons. I would love to see you."

"Because you're bored?" Alexis snaps.

"Because I'm lonely," he says. This works. This works wonders. Finally, Dipper has said something right, and he takes a congratulatory nap.

* * *

><p><strong>Trouble in paradise? Nahhhhhhhhh, I'm a nice author. ;) (That's a bold-faced lie for anybody who's new to my profile.)<strong>

**This mini-story will be continued in the following chapter, so stay tuned! I already have planned out most of the rest of these stories, but if there's any situation/interaction that you're dying to see, I still might have room to work it in somewhere! :) Thanks for reading!**


	9. concussion part 2

**Here's the second part of the concussion story! This chapter and the previous were about my favorite things to write _ever_ so I hope you all enjoy them. :D**

**I had to give Mabel a chance to interact with Dipper's girlfriend. It was just too much fun to pass up.**

* * *

><p>Every time Mabel tells the concussion story, it gets a little more theatrical and a little less… true.<p>

By the time Mr. Pines gets home from work and helps his wife and daughter shuck corn for dinner, Dipper has fallen down four flights of stairs instead of the less impressive single flight.

By the time Dipper peels the wet cloth from his eyes and drags himself into some nice clothes because his girlfriend is coming over for dinner for the very first time and she is still at least mildly pissed at him, he has slipped on a skateboard while trying to pop a wheelie on the aforementioned stairs.

By the time Alexis rings the doorbell and sits down at the table with her napkin folded neatly in her lap, Mabel has developed ESP.

"I was just sitting in English class, minding my own business, when I felt this stabbing pain in my head," Mabel says, gesturing to her temple with a forkful of steak. "And I thought to myself, '_I _haven't been injured in any way, I've just been sitting here,' so it had to be my telepathic link to my twin flaring up. And that's when I _knew_ Dipper was in trouble."

"That's not true," Dipper says. He's propping his head up on one hand and seems to be in danger of face planting into his mashed potatoes. "I texted you in class. You got a text."

"Excuse me!" Mabel puts her hands on her hips. "Maybe I felt the stabbing pain right _before _the text came in."

"You didn't. We don't have telepathy. Everything you're saying is a lie." He turns to Alexis, looking utterly exhausted. "Mabel and I don't have telepathy."

Alexis laughs uneasily, staring down at her silverware.

* * *

><p>After dinner, Dipper and Alexis watch a movie. He passes out, drooling into the arm of the couch, within the first fifteen minutes. She crosses her arms, sinks back into the cushions, and glares at him with a brilliant heat for the next forty-five.<p>

Mabel enters with a bowl full of popcorn for the adorable couple and some pain pills for Dipper. Her energetic greeting- _mind if I POP in? whomp- _is cut short by the sight of Alexis eviscerating her sleeping brother with her eyes.

"Everything okay?" she asks, suddenly feeling like she is trespassing in her own living room. Maybe even at her own twin's funeral.

"Yes," Alexis murmurs.

Mabel sinks down and sits cross-legged on the floor in front of her, holding out the bowl until Alexis reluctantly takes a handful of popcorn. "You know, you've been going out with Dipper for a while now, but you and I have never really talked. Just us, I mean."

Alexis smiles weakly. "I guess not."

"I know that I'm artsy, and you're math-y, and I'm loud and you're quiet. And to tell the truth, I think it's really disgusting that you've made out with my brother," Mabel says.

Alexis startles, glaring at Dipper's sleeping form again.

"I mean, I assume, Dipper doesn't kiss and tell. But, girl, if we have one thing in common, it's that sometimes I want to punch him in the face, too."

"I don't-" Alexis looks appalled. "I don't want that at all. _I love him_." She whispers the last part, as if he might wake up and hear it and think he isn't in trouble anymore. Mabel almost laughs, because since when have loving and wanting to punch someone been mutually exclusive?

Instead she says, "Tell me what's going on."

"It's just… I don't think I'm that important to him. He's been really sweet and everything, but… when it comes down to it, he doesn't really think about me." Her eyes abruptly fill with tears, and Mabel pats the closest part of her that she can reach, which happens to be her left foot.

"I just wanted to know that he'd think of me, when he was dying," Alexis chokes out. "I wanted to know if I'd even cross his mind at all."

Well, on the one hand, Mabel is relieved to know that Dipper's somewhat chilly and reserved girlfriend does have a raw, emotional side. On the other hand, _yikes_. Dipper hadn't been on his deathbed or anything, and she isn't exactly surprised that she got the call for help instead of Alexis. Mabel really hopes Alexis doesn't turn this into some kind of awkward one-sided competition for Dipper's trust. No matter how much she wants to let Alexis win, she can't just undo fifteen years of twinhood at will.

"Look, Dipper's an idiot, but he's crazy about you, and he's trying," Mabel says gently. "You know, I think I know what would make you feel better." She produces an assortment of colored Sharpies out of her pocket. "Let's draw on his face."

"No!" Alexis balks. "That's so mean."

Dipper twitches in his sleep.

"You're an only child, aren't you?"

Alexis nods hesitantly. Mabel shoves a lime green Sharpie into her hand.

"You have no idea how much better this will make you feel."

* * *

><p>Dipper wakes up to a slight tickling sensation on his face.<p>

"Hey there, Sleeping Beauty," Mabel says. "Do you know what century it is?"

"We have to wake you up every two hours," Alexis explains seriously. She reaches forward and draws a line across his forehead before he can react. "Also, we have to measure the swelling on your cranium and make sure it's contained."

"Oh, okay," Dipper whispers. "Thanks, babe."

Mabel punches Alexis's shoulder, covering her mouth with her other hand.

Dipper hears Alexis's half-smothered giggle as he drifts back to sleep and thinks it is just about the prettiest sound.

* * *

><p>"Mom, Dad, can Alexis sleep over?" Mabel hollers up the stairs a few hours and dozens of face-doodles later.<p>

They exchange a look. "With you or Dipper?" Mr. Pines yells back down.

"Me!"

They don't see why not.

* * *

><p>Early Saturday morning, Dipper wakes up to find the living room in ruin. It smells like some unholy combination of cake pops, nail polish, and Sharpie mixed with his sweat. The DVD menu of Disney sing-alongs is still playing on a loop on the TV, though the mess of blankets on the floor is abandoned. He walks to the bathroom, cradling the goose egg on his temple, slowly realizing that he hadn't dreamed any of his many periodic awakenings last night. Which means-<p>

He can hear their voices drifting down the hall. His girlfriend spent the night in his house, with his sister, which wasn't worth blushing about- stupid _face_. Another comfortable peal of laughter resonates from Mabel's room, and he smiles slowly to himself. This could be a very good thing.

And then he turns on the bathroom light and sees the rainbow mosaic which is his face.

'_Dipper's Girlz,' _his right cheek boasts in neon pink. His chin says '_Stud Muffin'._

Then again, this could be hell on earth.

* * *

><p><strong>No, Dipper, it'll be fun. *evil laughter*<strong>

**Aaahh, Alexis. It'd be hard _not_ to envy a bond like Dipper and Mabel's... but such is life. I know Dipper's been a somewhat passive character in his own fate thus far, but I promise that'll change in days to come. Thanks for tuning in! :) Reviews are water to my parched soul.**


	10. the job

**This is officially the longest chapter yet! It's also officially the chapter to give me the most problems! I wrote it and then realized that I meant to include in a bunch of other stuff. Now it's a mess of things happening and hasn't been properly proofread, because it's finals week so I just wanted to update before things got too crazy.**

**Also, I meant to include more of Aaron in previous chapters, but he got pushed to the wayside by Dipper and Mabel. But he's back now. And cooler than ever! :) JK, he's Dipper's friend.**

**Enjoy the mess that is chapter 10!**

* * *

><p>"Welcome to Barbeque Taco, home of the Barbeque Taco," Dipper drones into the headset for the thousandth time that afternoon. He wonders if one summer shy of sixteen is too young to have a mid-life crisis.<p>

"Do you want fries with that?" Mabel hollers her favorite fast-food phrase into the microphone for also about the hundredth time as she walks by with a tray. He shoves her into the drink machine.

So this summer hasn't been as thrilling as summers past. Big whoop. Part of adulthood is mindlessly passing out honey barbeque enchiladas and soft drinks when you'd rather be gallivanting around the woods beating monsters with a crowbar. And this is especially true now that Alexis has turned sixteen and gotten a car for her birthday. She's started wearing contacts and signed up to take several college courses over the summer break. Dipper is fifteen until the end of the summer, and maybe skipping a grade was a terrible idea because if he doesn't do something about the car situation fast _she_ will be taking _him_ on dates.

"You just _had_ to end up with an older woman after all, didn't you, tiger?!"

Mabel, as usual, has been largely unhelpful in his predicament.

So it was super cool of Aaron to get them jobs at the local fast-food joint his uncle owned, even if the cuisine is sort of subpar, the customers are rude, and Mabel has entirely too much fun. She's currently busy flicking grease at Aaron, who is deep frying some meat of indeterminate origin.

It's amazing how much she's gotten Aaron to come out of his shell just since they started working together. Dipper and Aaron are going on two years of solid best friendship, but it's always been the quiet sort of camaraderie- eating sandwiches at lunch together, working on geometry homework for long hours, competing at video games. It's not that they don't talk, but Aaron's pretty reserved about his personal life and ignores his phone and his friends for long hours at a time. Dipper has about all the conversation that he can handle with Mabel, anyway. Aaron's like the breaks on your bicycle- boring and reliable enough that you don't ever wonder about them until they start making funny noises. Like taking orders in Pig Latin at the drive-through, to Mabel's extreme amusement.

"…ies-fray ith-way at-thay?" Aaron finishes, stroking his scraggly attempt at a beard mischievously.

"Someone is going to think you're speaking in tongues," Dippers warns.

Mabel wipes her eyes and tries to contain her mirth. "Up-hay op-tay!" she says, smacking his hand in a high-five. "You are seriously the coolest person in the world! LET'S GO MAKE SECRET MESSAGES WITH THE SAUCE PACKETS!"

Other than potentially getting them fired and costing him the car he's saving for, Dipper can't help but enjoy watching their friendship unfold. Mabel's unique brand of crazy loosened Alexis up when he thought nothing ever could. Anyone who can cope with her has the potential of being a friend for life.

* * *

><p>Mr. Pines genuinely thinks he is teaching his children how to drive. For many weeks, they let him believe it.<p>

The truth was that the summer they were thirteen, the last time they saw Gravity Falls (had it really been two years ago?), Wendy rolled up to the Mystery Shack in a used-to-be-blue rust bucket and Dipper almost drooled with envy. The _freedom_ was unimaginable.

She climbed out of the driver's seat and tossed her hair over a shoulder and said, "You wanna take her for a spin?" At Dipper's startled expression, she added, "Just around the shack, I won't let you get arrested or anything."

Wendy held the keys out to Dipper and, after a moment's pause, he took them.

He still thinks about that moment a lot, actually. Sometimes when he is walking to the front of the class to give an oral presentation or to the end of the diving board or over to Alexis's lunch table to finally speak his feelings, he remembers how his heart lurched, but he took a deep breath and grabbed the keys anyway and then had one of the best days of his entire life. Within minutes she had pointed out all the controls and urged him to push the accelerator a little harder and they were rolling down the dirt road with the windows down and the wind in their hair and everything was perfect.

Then when they looped back around she had given Mabel a turn, and that was a whole different level of terrifying.

"Oh, right, I forgot what yellow means again," Mabel says, slapping her forehead after whizzing through an intersection on a morning when it's her turn to drive to work. Mr. Pines grips his seat tight and stifles a swear word. Mabel winks at Dipper in the rearview mirror.

He thinks she's a little too convincing.

* * *

><p>After a month of work at Barbeque Taco, the skin on Dipper's face seems to be absorbing the grease right out of the air like a sponge. He cancels two dates with Alexis before he realizes that the massive, face-rending breakouts aren't going away anytime soon, and he will have to face her eventually. But not yet.<p>

"Why isn't this happening to you?" Dipper moans, checking his reflection in the window of the booth they're sitting at on their break.

"Alpha twin plus superior hygiene," Mabel says. "It's not a big deal. You've just got more constellations on your face than usual. Look, there's Orion's belt on your chin."

"I appreciate your sensitivity."

"Pop it! Pop it!" Mabel chants, pumping her fists.

He pushes up a shock of hair that didn't used to be so greasy to inspect the damage to his forehead.

"Hey, what happened to your birthmark?" Mabel asks. "Dipper, oh my gosh! It's going away!"

And sure enough, the dots and lines of that mark are fading only to be covered with a patchwork pattern of acne. He'll never be able to escape looking like a freak, in some capacity or another.

* * *

><p>Mabel's scream, Dipper decides, could curdle milk if she stood too close to cows.<p>

In the cold light of dawn, wearing a panicked lack of shirt and socks, he runs down the hall to find her standing in front of the bathroom mirror, her shrieks dissolving into whimpers and moans as she sticks out her chin, stroking it gently.

"It's _monstrous!_" Mabel wails, gesturing to a pimple on her chin about the size of a pinhead.

Dipper shares a moment of sympathetic eye contact with himself in the mirror. He turns to leave.

"I can't go out like this! Puberty has finally claimed my youthful beauty as its prize! Dippperrrrrrr."

"It's your own personal North Star," Dipper says with a smirk.

Mabel's bottom lip starts to quiver. Dipper immediately feels like the cruelest person alive, and how in the heck is that fair? He's not about to apologize, though, not after the world of teasing she's put him through.

"It's like my face lost its virginity," Mabel mutters.

"It's not even remotely like that."

"I feel terrible."

Dipper coughs uncomfortably. "You look fine, really. Just put some make-up on it. We're gonna be late."

* * *

><p>"I'll give you five bucks to tell Mabel she looks nice today."<p>

Aaron frowns. "What, is it a prank or something?"

"No." Dipper rolls his eyes. "She just needs to get over herself and she won't listen to me about it."

"Uh, okay." Never one to turn down easy money, Aaron takes the bill Dipper slips him and waltzes over to the ice cream machine where Mabel is humming while she works.

"Hey there," he says. He waves the money, and across the room Dipper facepalms in fear that his socially awkward friend is about to come clean about their deal. "I've got five bucks here that says a Fiesta Meal will make that pretty smile of yours even bigger."

Mabel's eyebrows shoot up. "With a toy pig?" she asks.

He pulls the plastic-wrapped toy out of his pocket. "Is there any other option?"

Her sass melts away as she stares into its little plastic pig eyes. "You're an angel from heaven," she whispers, enveloping him in a hug.

He glances back to make sure Dipper is occupied before he hugs her back.

* * *

><p>"Sooooooo, random question…. Do you ever get to know somebody and their personality is so wonderful that their body odor actually starts to smell good to you?" Mabel asks Dipper as he's working the register.<p>

"No. Ew, Mabel, no, that's disgusting," Dipper says.

"Me, neither." Mabel leans against the ice cream machine and stares at nothing, sighing dreamily.

The bell over the door dings and a group of college students walk in, freshly exhausted. Dipper almost chokes when he sees Alexis among their ranks, in the high heels and little skirt she wore to class. She spots him before he can hiss to Mabel to cover for him.

"Well, fancy meeting you here," she says evenly. Alexis doesn't have her glasses to push up anymore at uncomfortable moments, and he wonders if she misses them.

Dipper laughs, trying to pull his visor down over his speckled forehead. He hasn't felt so prickly and _young _in front of a girl since… oh gosh.

"What can I get for you?" he asks quietly.

Alexis grabs Dipper's collar and kisses him across the counter, long and hard, in front of the whole group. They laugh and whistle because she seemed sort of shy, and they didn't know she had the guts.

Dipper's heart explodes. He loves her. He always knew that but now he _knows._

"_Would you like fries with that?_" Mabel screams behind them.

* * *

><p>Dipper starts to get suspicious at their Sweet Sixteen party.<p>

First Aaron calls him (something Aaron never does) to say that he can't make it because his family will be out of town. Then he calls again to say he _can_ make it. Then he arrives an hour late, when the party is in full swing. Mabel begs him to come out on the dance floor they've set up in the backyard, but he shakes his head.

"Sorry, I've got to get on the road." He casts an anxious look at the setting sun. "Or my family will kill me. But I had to bring by your presents."

He gives Mabel light up shoes. She can't get back to the dance floor to test them fast enough. She drags Alexis out to watch the demonstration.

"Growing up sucks," Dipper comments to his friend. "I never thought you'd have a life outside of us."

"Yeah. It's just… yeah." Aaron seems distracted by something. Dipper follows his line of sight out to where Mabel is shaking her rear end in a wild celebratory dance.

"Sorry." Aaron immediately flushes and looks down.

"For what?"

"Nothing." He swallows and walks back to his pickup truck to leave.

Yup, something suspicious is happening. Plain old vanilla bike breaks Aaron has something he doesn't want to share with his best friend. And he's got a pretty good idea what that is.

* * *

><p>Dipper thumbs through Journal #3 by the light of a full moon.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>I'm just realizing that I've now written a fanfic in which Dipper and Mabel work at a (semi-)Mexican restaurant. Don't be that person. Don't leave that comment. Just resist. ;)<strong>

**This is also the halfway point! I have twenty chapters planned that I'll publish soon if you leave REVIEWS... just kidding, I'll share them anyway because I'm writing this for my own entertainment as much as anything. :) :) :) But reviews still make me feel nice. **


	11. suspicious minds

**DUN DUN DUN! EXCITEMENT!**

**First of all, I am so proud of you readers for not mentioning the Mexican restaurant. Second of all, I'm surprised no one reacted to Dipper looking in the journal in the middle of the night! Time to see just how paranoid he really is.**

**I would say this is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever written, but I just posted a one-shot about twin telepathy and menstrual cramps and nothing could ever top that for weirdness. Although this chapter does have some remarkably similar themes.**

* * *

><p>Aaron knows something is wrong when Dipper waves him over to sit in the most secluded corner of the school library. Instead of sitting across from him, his friend paces around the table anxiously.<p>

"Hey, man, I don't want to be weird about this. But I think there's something that you haven't been telling me."

Aaron's heart lurches in his throat. He just came here to get the homework he missed from his sick day, not to be confronted with his feelings for Mabel. They are one month into their junior year, and he is happy to keep the status quo going for as long as possible.

"I just… there's a couple things you've been doing that make me think…" Dipper continues. "I… don't know how to say this."

Aaron's been trying so hard to be chill in front of Dipper. He's been trying not to study her too long or smile when she laughs or anything else that might give him away, but now it seems that it's all been for naught. Dipper sits down and puts his head in his hands. They are good friends now, and Dipper isn't going to yell at him the way he had yelled at those boys freshman year, even if Mabel is his only sister and best friend and he would protect her with his life, right?

Right?

* * *

><p>There's only one way to do this. Dipper hasn't made an accusation like this since he was twelve, and he really hasn't missed the scorn and derision that usually follow close behind. Dipper pictures the keys in Wendy's hand, takes a deep breath, and spits it out.<p>

"Okay, I'm just gonna hope this doesn't offend you or make you lose all respect for me. But I sort of think you might be… a werewolf?"

Aaron blinks.

"Yes? No? Close?" Dipper waves his open palms across the table.

Another indiscernible flick of the eyelids.

"Right genus? Different species?" Dipper prods.

Aaron's eyelid twitches. "Are you _kidding_ me?"

"Look, maybe I've just read Harry Potter way too many times, but for the past year you've always been gone on the day of the full moon, and you sort of look like you've been up way too many late nights. Also, you smell like raw meat sometimes. And I'm really sorry if that's due to, like, a medical condition or something, and I shouldn't have drawn attention to it. You know what, this was a bad idea. If you tell me you're not a werewolf, I'll believe you."

Aaron bites his lip. "I'm not a werewolf. And I am _really_ worried about you."

Dipper sighs deeply. "Yeah, I understand why you would be. Well, I just wanted to let you know that it's okay if you _are_ a werewolf. I mean, I've been researching a lot about the species and a lot of that horror stuff, it's just legend, you know?"

"Not _all_ of it?" Aaron raises his eyebrows in disbelief.

"I mean, most modern werewolves are pretty domesticated and aren't really more dangerous than other dogs, like, they don't feast on human flesh, and _wow_, I sound crazy." Dipper has a math test to study for, and he's wasting precious time humiliating himself. "The point is, you're a really good friend, and you being a werewolf would never, ever change that. Just like I hope you'll still be friends with me after discovering I'm a lunatic." Dipper holds out his hand for a fist bump.

Aaron fist bumps him, his face still a mask of pure bewilderment.

"Are we good?" Dipper asks, more than a little concerned that he has burnt his best friendship bridge behind him.

Aaron's eyes abruptly fill with tears.

"What?" Dipper's eyes dart around the library as the friend he's never seen even the slightest bit emotional starts to sob. And not quietly, either. "Oh my gosh, are you okay?"

Did he really take being friends with a conspiracy theorist harder than Dipper would take being friends with a werewolf?

"Did you mean that? Would you really accept me, if I was a monster? No one's ever said that to me before," Aaron manages, wiping his nose on his shirt.

"Yeah, um, if you ever get bitten, you can always call this guy."

Aaron doesn't stop crying. Dipper begins to worry that there are some underlying issues at play. "Is this… is this about something else?"

"No," Aaron says, taking a shuddering breath. "That's just such a relief to hear."

"Yeah, um…" Dipper pats his friend's shoulder uncomfortably. "Yeah."

* * *

><p>He sends Mabel a text. <em>Not Aaron.<em>

_Are you sure? _The frowning emoticon she sends might as well have her puppy eyes.

He winces, hiding his phone in his math book. _Continuing investigation. But pretty darn sure._

* * *

><p>At the beginning of November, Aaron calls Dipper while he's writing an essay in his bedroom.<p>

"Um, I don't know how to say this." His voice is gruff. "But I can't just keep living the lie… and we were in a public place last time… and, um… I actually am a werewolf."

Well, that makes more sense. Dipper sits up, closing his laptop. "Oh. Okay. Thanks for telling me, man." He knows it wouldn't be right to gloat, but his twelve-year-old self is doing cartwheels inside.

"I hope this doesn't make things weird. I've never been allowed to tell my friends before. My parents were all… yeah, it doesn't matter. Did you tell… I mean, does Mabel know?"

"Nah, not yet, but she isn't gonna mind. Trust me. We saw stranger stuff in Gravity Falls all the time when we were kids."

"Gravity Falls! No way! I've got family there!" Aaron says.

"Really? What part of town?" Dipper marvels at the small world in which they live.

"Uh… the woods. In a cave."

"Cool."

A little laugh escapes Aaron's throat. "You know, when you confronted me the other day, I thought you were gonna say you'd figured out… I liked your sister."

"Dude, literally everyone knows that. If you're into Mabel, you should go for it."

Aaron takes a deep breath. "Thanks. Listen, if I ever transform and endanger either of you guys, you don't hesitate to shoot me on the spot. Okay?"

Dipper bites his lip uncomfortably. "I, uh, I'd rather… I have a dog whistle. Would that work?"

"Yeah," Aaron says after a moment of thought. "Just blow it really loud. Don't hold back."

In the short silence that follows, they come to the unspoken agreement that if Aaron ever breaks her heart, he can expect his ears to bleed profusely.

"Okay. Cool. Talk to you later, man."

Dipper hangs up and pounds on the wall next to him. "Aaron's fine!"

"_What?_" Mabel calls. He hears her bound over to press her ear against the wall.

"If you wanna date Aaron, he's fine."

"We've been dating for like two weeks, Sherlock!" she calls back.

"Oh, wow, good to know!" Dipper flips upside down on the bed and kicks his feet up on his poster of the Milky Way in irritation.

"Just _casually! _Gosh!"

"He's got something to tell you, though!"

Mabel gasps. "Is he going into the army?"

"Hmm, I don't think that was it," Dipper teases.

"Is he a secret agent?"

"I just can't remember."

Mabel screeches. "_Does he have head lice?_"

"I really don't see why I should be keeping you informed when _you_ aren't doing likewise."

"I'm _sorry_, bro! Just…ahhhh! TELL ME NOW!"

He hears the squeaking as she jumps up and down on her bed. Dipper grins to himself.

"Ask him yourself! Next time you go out, as I hear you so often do."

He swears he can _hear_ her pouting on the other side of the wall.

* * *

><p>Mabel takes a long, thoughtful sip of her hot chocolate before she speaks.<p>

"You know, I'm already sixteen, and I've gone on a buttload of dates with a buttload of guys but I've never really _had a boyfriend_. It's just like, oh, I could go out with you because you've got nice eyes, or oh, I could be your girlfriend because of your amazing dimples, or because you bought me stuff, but then I think about it and it's like _naaaaaaahhhh._"

Aaron reddens and shifts in the café chair. He isn't quite sure where this is going.

"You know, there was a time in my life when I would have been happy to date you just _because_ you're a werewolf. And don't get me wrong, that is an _amazing _perk. But I could go out with any old werewolf up in Gravity Falls. I could literally have my pick of the litter."

"You- what?"

She grabs Aaron's hand. "But the really special thing is having a chance to date one of the best friends I've ever had."

Mabel doesn't realize until she says it that maybe _this_ is what she's been waiting for.

* * *

><p><strong>Yay! Love for Mabel!<strong>

**That whole delayed-confession thing is further evidence of my really odd sense of humor. It'll be going back to normal (?) soon... as normal as their lives ever are... :) R & R makes my day!**


	12. wondering

**Hello readers! Thank you all for being so patient for the past nine days while I was visiting family- that's my longest gap so far, not too shabby. :) I hope you all had a great Christmas and enjoy the rest of the break! :)**

* * *

><p>"And then I walk up on stage to give my acceptance speech and when I look down, I'm wearing absolutely no clothes. Zero. And there's no escape route. If I run offstage, the cameras will just follow me."<p>

"Oh, man." Dipper laughs sympathetically, studying the stars overhead. The springs of the trampoline creak as Alexis rolls over onto her stomach and pokes his shoulder.

"Now it's your turn. Recurring nightmare. Go!"

Dipper hesitates, flushing. "Well, I can't really think of anything…"

Alexis sticks out her bottom lip in a pout. "Aww, you know you have one! What's that one dream you've had since you were a kid, and every time you think you'll never have it again, it just pops up again and scares the poop out of you?"

"Okay. It's kind of dark, though." Dipper taps his fingers together, trying to think how best to explain. "Ever since I was, like, twelve, I've had this dream every few months that I'm having a sort of out of body experience. I'm just watching myself walk around, I can't control my arms and legs or what I say or…. what I do."

"Ooo." Alexis shivers. "That's freaky."

"And the weird part is that there's this big, yellow triangle with one eye in the middle of his- uh, its face, and it's the one controlling me… and making me sort of… like, get these forks and… " Dipper trails off.

Alexis's face blanches ever so slightly in the light from the porch. "And then what?"

Dipper coughs into his elbow. "I don't really remember."

The trampoline shifts under them as Alexis sits up, wrapping Dipper's jacket a little tighter around her shoulders against the evening breeze. She studies him with wide, concerned blue eyes.

"What?"

"Nothing. That's just really…. um…" She pushes her hair behind her ear. "Have you ever talked to anybody about this?"

Dipper shrugs. "I mean, Mabel knows…"

Alexis bites her lip. Oh, she meant a professional. He's very glad he didn't mention the knives in his dreams. Or the freaking garbage disposal.

"It's okay, really. I probably saw some movie when I was half asleep and my subconscious just ran with it."

"Probably," Alexis says, lacing her fingers through his.

Sometimes she lays awake at night and wonders about him.

* * *

><p>"I think I'm gonna tell her. I mean, we've been dating for almost a year and a half," Dipper says, marveling at how fast the time has gone. "I can't just keep making stuff up. Do you think she can handle it?"<p>

"Sure she can. Have some faith, you dork."

"But should I tell her all at once, or try to ease her into the idea that, I don't know, _magic exists and her life is a lie?_"

"You know Alexis," Mabel says, because she also knows Alexis all too well by now. "No matter how you do it, she'll just be pissed that you didn't tell her sooner."

Mabel and Alexis's blossoming friendship has resulted in the twins sharing a "group" for the first time in their junior year. The clan mostly consists of girls who have been deeply connected blood sisters since middle school and a few hopeful boyfriends who rotate in and out. Dipper and Alexis are the only constant couple.

"It's easy for you to be honest," Dipper retorts. "You're dating a werewolf. There's nothing you could possibly have to prepare him for."

Despite their attempts to include Aaron in this newly formed social circle, he's always hung back from their other friends. Mabel is surprisingly chill about this. In her first serious dating relationship, she has actually been surprisingly chill about everything. She doesn't make him keep up with bi-monthly anniversaries or text her around the clock, and she doesn't complain at all when he disappears for days at a time. It's probably healthy, Dipper thinks, that she isn't expecting perfect consistency from a supernatural creature of the night. Also, girls can be downright exhausting, and he's thankful for Aaron's sake that she isn't.

"I've always known that I'd have to tell Alexis sometime… I mean, I want to take our kids back to Gravity Falls and-" Dipper stops abruptly.

"What was that?" Mabel's eyebrows shoot up.

"_Our _kids. Like, my kids and your kids. They'd be _cousins_. I was just thinking out loud. Gosh." Dipper buries his nose in a book and ignores the fact that his twin is staring at him. She studies him for several long minutes, giggling louder and louder until her laughter bubbles over into a shriek.

"I'm gonna be the maid of honor!"

"Shut up," Dipper mutters.

She is already designing the gowns.

* * *

><p>Alexis turns the final page of the journal and then closes it. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, staring at the ground.<p>

"I totally understand if you don't believe me," Dipper says, rubbing his neck. "I would never believe it either, except, you know, I lived through it. But you're a rational human being, and I totally understand if you think I'm crazy."

"I would never think that," Alexis insists. "It's just… a lot to take in."

"Yeah, I know. It was years ago and I'm still sort of reeling from it. I had to tell you. It's like a huge part of my life, you know?"

There's a long silence. She flips between the gnome and poltergeist pages and bites her lip.

"Do you think… is it the most important thing that ever happened to you?" Alexis asks.

Dipper feels strangely cornered. "Well, one of them." Was that a trick question? No, he's just nervous from such an outpouring of honesty. "I know I should have told you a long time ago, but it got harder and harder and then- I had to tell you now, though, because Mabel's boyfriend Aaron is a werewolf- totally harmless, I swear- but we were all thinking of going to prom together."

"We were?" Alexis's eyebrows knit together. "Since when? You didn't tell me that."

"Oh, uh, Mabel just threw it out the other day. She wanted to double date…" he trails off. Of all the revelations tonight, _this _is the most unsettling to her? "Unless you don't want to?"

"No, that's fine." Her smile is chilly. "That sounds like a lot of fun."

Dipper hesitates. "Are you sure? Because if you don't want to you should say something right now. And we won't."

"Why wouldn't I want to?"

He shrugs. She grabs his shirt and kisses him, and that melts away the memory of her icy side, for the moment.

* * *

><p>But sometimes he lays awake at night and wonders about her.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Sometimes I lay awake at night and wonder about both of them. But such is the creative process. Thanks for reading! Aaron will be back next chapter, the darling little puppy. XD Thanks for contributing to the get-Stan-out-of-jail fund, cartoonsforlife1314! Hopefully he's out by now, though. :D<strong>


	13. prom

**Happy New Year everybody! Have a great 2015! I actually have a chapter that is New Year's themed, but I'm not ready to post it yet. Such a shame.**

**Thanks for reading to this point! This is a pivotal chapter and I'd love to hear your opinions, good and bad. And there will be bad opinions. BRING IT :D**

* * *

><p>Mabel twirls down the hall in her sparkly-toed shoes, admiring the duct tape and tulle dress that she has spent weeks locked in her bedroom preparing. The neon tape crinkles under her arms, and she grins wide enough to split her face. In less than an hour, she and Dipper and their respective dates will pile into the hand-me-down minivan that she and Dipper have rather stressfully been sharing all year and rolling to prom for the adventure of a lifetime.<p>

"This is the beginning of everything!" Mabel shouts, grabbing Waddles' front legs and spinning his fat pig body around the kitchen. "Dipper and Alexis and Mabel and Aaron forever! The power couples of the eleventh grade are gonna blow everybody away. Oh, yeah, baby!"

Dipper adjusts his bow tie in the mirror. He hasn't really said much of anything about the super awesome incredibly wonderful fact that they are double dating for the first time ever. Not that she expects him to be as excited as her, of course. That would be unreasonable, because nobody could possibly be as excited as she was about anything.

The doorbell rings, once for his date, radiant and poised, and once for hers, in a rumpled suit and uneven tie. Last night was the full moon, so she's just glad he could make it at all.

Aaron struggles to form a coherent sentence in the presence of Mabel's duct-tape clad beauty. "I- you- gorgeous."

"Thanks, you look pretty dapper yourself!" Mabel pats down Aaron's bedhead and then slugs him in the shoulder, hard enough to make him wince. "And you look dapper, too!" she says, slugging Dipper as well, because Alexis hasn't said much of anything yet.

"And you look like a fairy princess!" Mabel rather invasively admires the rhinestones on Alexis's dress. "Man, if those were real diamonds, I bet you could trade this dress for Manhattan Island or something!"

"You do look really nice," Dipper murmurs to Alexis.

"Thanks. I thought you were gonna wear the tie that matches," Alexis says with a weak smile. "The one I got for you."

Dipper blanches. "Right. I… am. It's up in my closet. Let me grab it real fast."

"No, don't worry about it. We don't wanna be late." She fusses with the hem of her dress.

Their parents wield the camera for the pinning of the corsages and the posing in front of the fireplace. "Smile!" Mr. Pines hollers.

Alexis smiles in the pictures. She doesn't smile in the van.

In the backseat, holding Aaron's hand, Mabel raises a cheer to their first of many, many, _many_ double dates. "This is the dawn of a new era! We need something to call ourselves! The most fabulous foursome of all time!" Mabel gasps. "We could be a superhero team! What superpower do you guys want? Aaron, you're exempt, you already have one."

Alexis folds her arms and stares out the window at the passing street signs.

"Do you want to listen to the radio?" Dipper asks her quietly.

"I don't care," she says.

"What after party are we going to? I'm sure we'll be invited to all of them. There's supposed to be a lot of illegal substances at these after parties. Should I have brought Smile Dip? I feel like I should have brought Smile Dip."

"What's Smile Dip?" Aaron asks, still innocent in the ways of deadly candy.

"Don't let her. Do not let her touch Smile Dip," Dipper warns, glancing in the rearview mirror as he turns the wheel. "Nooooooo illegal substances for Mabel."

"Hey," she snaps. "Smile Dip saves lives! From depression and heartache!"

Alexis wrinkles her nose and looks back over her shoulder at Mabel and Aaron. She leans over and whispers something in Dipper's ear as he drives.

Dipper's eyes narrow. Over the sound of her own constant chatter, Mabel hears him hiss, "He can't help it, _okay_? Could you stop?"

Alexis sits back, trying to subtly pull her jacket over her nose.

Mabel's monologue almost falters. In his revelation of the supernatural to his girlfriend, Dipper was supposed to address the lingering wet-dog smell of the werewolf transformation. She pinches Aaron's cheek.

"You know, we're all so beautiful, I just want to put our faces on Christmas cards for the rest of our lives. Do you think April is too early to send Christmas cards?"

She doesn't even know what she's saying anymore. Mabel's just desperately blowing hot air to keep the inside of the car from freezing over. Slowly, subconsciously, but surely, she is realizing that everything is wrong. But this is the last thing she will ever, ever admit on prom night.

"THIS! THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE SONG!" Mabel roars as they enter the decked out gymnasium, even though it's just the background of an ad on Spotify. Shannon and Katelyn and Isabelle embrace her and gush about her homemade dress and twirl their own, and Aaron even comes out of his shell and talks a little in between stuffing his face with punch and crackers. His protests of "I don't dance" are quickly dismissed, and within two songs she has him jumping around with crazy abandon.

Everything is just how she'd been picturing it since she was eight and had started playing prom with her stuffed animals.

She gives Dipper a thumbs-up across the room when the first slow dance starts, but he doesn't return it because she suddenly realizes he isn't in the gymnasium. Alexis's absence, too, registers on a gut level that she refuses to think about. She assumes they are just making out in a janitor's closet somewhere. Making out and making up.

"_Disco ball!_" screams Shannon as the sparkling orb descends. Shannon is possibly the only person on earth who could comprehend Mabel-levels of excitement. Mabel hops up and down.

"Ooo, I made a jacket by gluing glitter to more glitter, and I'm gonna see how glittery it looks under the disco ball!" She charges for the gym doors. "Hang on, I left it in the car!"

Mabel stops short at the top of the stairs that Dipper once fell down. Voices drift up from the landing below.

"What has gotten _into_ you?"

"I'll tell you what," Dipper snaps. "I hate this. I _hate_ feeling like you're always mad at me."

"I am _not_ always mad at you!" Alexis is obviously close to tears.

"I don't know that. I don't _ever _know that for sure."

Mabel wraps her hands tightly around the stair railing, careful to stay out of sight.

High heels stomp the concrete landing. "You don't even care that this night isn't what I expected!"

"I can't do this, okay?" His voice winds all the way up into twelve-year-old Dipper territory. "I don't know _how_ to make you happy!"

Mabel backs away, heartbeat throbbing in the pit of her stomach. She goes back into the gym without her glitter jacket.

She's startled when Dipper taps her shoulder just a moment later. He swings the minivan keys casually in his hand, a strained smile on his face. "Hey, uh, I have to take Alexis home. She isn't feeling well."

"Hey, is everything-"

"I have to go. Can Aaron call his parents or something? Or… I can come back and get you guys later." His voice cracks.

"Go ahead," Mabel says. "We'll catch a ride."

"Have fun!" Dipper says. He pats Aaron's shoulder and mutters '_no Smile Dip_' before he slips out the door. Through the window in the gym door, Mabel sees Alexis follow him a moment later, mascara streaming down her face. She fights the urge to run after them.

Instead, Mabel fishes her phone out of a hidden duct tape pocket and texts,_ Did you guys break up?_ She stands by the refreshment table and waits, staring down into her glass of punch.

When she doesn't get an answer, she lets Aaron pull her back out onto the dance floor. Mabel dances like the world is ending.

* * *

><p>Her phone finally buzzes two hours later, after Shannon has given them a ride back to Aaron's house and she's climbing into his rundown pick-up truck.<p>

All the message says is _Yeah. _

Dipper needed her to tell him when they were a couple. He doesn't need her to tell him it's over. Mabel bites her lip.

"Can we make a stop?" she asks Aaron on the way home. "I have an idea for our own after party."

"Sure."

Mabel and Aaron walk into the grocery store hand-in-hand. He's immediately drawn to the packaged cuts of raw meat in the back, but it only takes a couple of pokes from Mabel to redirect his attention to the frozen food aisle. She picks out a carton of Rocky Road ice cream and hugs it to her chest.

"I thought you didn't like nuts," Aaron says.

Mabel nods absently. "True."

"Uh, is that all you wanted to do here?" Aaron asks.

"Heck no."

The attendant stocking the shelves at eleven o'clock at night is less than thrilled to find a couple of teenagers racing the shopping carts they're standing on down the cereal aisle. They abandon that activity to see if they can fit in the freezers together. They can't, but it was worth a shot. Aaron writes their initials with his finger in the condensation on the freezer door and envelopes it in a heart.

"So not only did you experience your first prom tonight, but also your first graffiti offense, your first drag race, and competitive squishing-into-small-places," Mabel says with a grin as he walks her up to her front door at the end of the night.

"First time in a human grocery store at all, actually," Aaron confesses, a bit sheepishly.

"NO WAY!" she slugs his arm good-naturedly. Not in the same spot as before, he's starting to bruise. "A lot of firsts tonight."

He reddens. "There were a lot of human things I never did before I met you."

"Like what?"

Aaron touches her cheek and then kisses her, bathed in the yellow porch light. Her foot pops, of course.

Mabel finds her mother doing dishes in the kitchen and verbally vomits every last (positive) detail of her evening. Mrs. Pines smiles wide, but the line between her eyebrows doesn't quite disappear. Mabel pretends not to notice. She skips around the kitchen, banging drawers as she pulls out spoons and bowls and the ice cream scoop. Grabbing her grocery bag, she disappears down the hall to change into a roomy flowered sweater, tossing her duct tape masterpiece over her sleeping pig.

Loud music seeps through the wall from the room next door. Loud, wailing-in-pain electric guitar music. Aaron isn't the only one having firsts tonight.

Mabel knocks quietly, hesitantly.

"Not right now, Mom," a voice calls hoarsely from within.

"It's Mabel."

The doorknob turns ever so slightly, and Dipper peers through the crack. "Hey, did you have fun?" he asks. His eyes are red.

"Yeah, mostly."

"Aaron was okay? To you?"

"Yeah, he always is, dork."

"Cool. Tell me about it later." He starts to close the door again.

"Wait!" Mabel holds up the carton of ice cream. "I- I thought you might need this."

Dipper smiles at her bitterly. "Thanks, but I really have zero desire to eat ice cream and talk about my feelings."

Mabel scoffs. "Who said anything about _feelings? _I just wanted to eat ice cream and watch the X-Files." She holds up the DVD set, which had been Dipper's favorite Christmas present in the days before he encountered real mysteries.

His eyes suddenly fill up with tears.

Taking that as an all-clear, Mabel comes in and shuts off the sad music on his laptop, popping in the first DVD. "Two scoops or seven?" she asks, raising the ice cream scoop.

"Seven," Dipper whispers, hurriedly wiping his face.

They watch X-files in his room until three o'clock in the morning.

"Remember that first summer we went to Gravity Falls? And all those gnomes kidnapped me?" Mabel asks, snickering at a monster that just isn't as frightening as a wall of angry gnomes, which makes it inherently funny.

"Yeah," Dipper murmurs.

"Wasn't that something?"

"Yeah."

They both secretly think that everything would be alright again if they could just be there now.

* * *

><p><strong>I didn't realize how many of you would ship DipperAlexis when I started writing- I assumed resistance-to-OCs would prevent that from happening too soon! But yeah, I'm sorry about it. This has been my plan since the beginning.**

**There will never be any Pinecest in this story. I don't think any of you are reading for that, but I just wanted to clarify. :)**


	14. breakdown

**Wow, guys! I'm overwhelmed with the reviews on this story, and I loved hearing your reactions to the previous chapter. I know that it wasn't exactly a popular move to break up Dipper and Alexis, but thank you all for being so respectful and encouraging through your tears. :)**

**I'd love to tell you that this chapter is totes happier, but uh, it's not. But I promise, after this chapter things get better. Really. I just couldn't resist delving a little more into the psychology of Mabel. This girl is as complex as she is fabulous. And she's _quite _fabulous.**

**Dipper and Mabel are 16, almost 17, and finishing up their junior year.**

* * *

><p>Dipper and Mabel don't exactly realize the social implications of the break-up until it is too late.<p>

Mabel has English first thing on Monday morning, after prom. She approaches the usual group of girls who are gathered around Alexis in the back of the classroom, listening to her whispered story with both horrified and angry expressions. The conversation dies when Mabel takes a seat among them. She hesitates, not enjoying being the center of attention for once.

"Listen, if there's anything I can do…"

"I don't want him back, okay!" Alexis says abruptly, eyes wet and flaming.

"Well, I mean- I can't…" And Mabel is struck once again by the fact that she _can't_.

Alexis hurries out of the room, crying into her hands. Katelyn and Isabelle follow her down the hall, cooing like mother hens.

"I don't have to take sides or anything, do I?" Mabel asks Shannon, who remains behind.

"Of course not," Shannon reassures her. "She just probably needs some time. You guys were all so close."

But Mabel sees the dirty looks they all give Dipper in the hall, whispering behind their hands. She wants to tell the group that Alexis isn't the only one to cry herself to sleep over the 'incident', but Dipper's keeping his chin up at school, so she'll take his secrets to the grave, too. She abandons herself to the fact that she'll never be able to listen to the ex-boyfriend hate at their sleepovers again. They know it, too, and instinctively shut up about the break-up when she comes around. They shut up about everything, in fact.

In the lunchroom Mabel pauses with her tray, torn between the sisterhood she's sworn on her grandmother's grave to love and cherish forever, and the deathly quiet brother who has stuck his nose in an SAT prep book and thrown away his sandwich. She drags Aaron over and they sit with him in silence.

Every.

Single.

Day.

Dipper has always claimed that twin telepathy is a lie, but Mabel knows she isn't feeling a regular amount of empathy. Mabel hates seeing her friends suffer. She's always been able to sense the sadness sort of radiating off them. Sometimes she can even feel the signals coming from perfect strangers, and sometimes they are so strong and so scrambled that she feels like she'll go crazy if she doesn't blare some music or stick her fingers in her ears or _fix it _somehow.

But Mabel doesn't even have to be in the room with Dipper to feel his misery in the pit of her stomach. She'll just be sitting in Algebra 2, minding her own business, and she'll feel him hurting from across the hall and there isn't anything she can do about it. Having a depressed twin is something like having an oozing bullet wound in your side. Messy, exquisitely exhausting, and impossible to ignore.

"Open wide for the airplane," she says in the lunchroom, the week before the school year ends. Dipper knocks the sandwich out of her hands.

"Let me help you," Mabel pleads. "Just let me help you eat the sandwich."

Dipper pries her palms from his cheeks, avoiding her pitying gaze. "For the last time, will you calm the heck down? I need this time to study."

But he says he's fine, so she's just supposed to ignore it.

* * *

><p>Summer comes, none of the girls call her, and Mabel learns that werewolves have migratory patterns.<p>

"We run through the Rocky Mountains and up into Canada. Have to re-mark some of the clan territory, it's a yearly thing. Not re-mark… like that. Okay, yeah, re-mark like that. Look, I know it's awful, but it's only for like a month," Aaron says, holding her hand in the back of his pick-up truck. "Will- will you wait for me?"

Mabel shoves him playfully. "No, silly, I've got a long line of other guys waiting to date me, so that's not an option."

Aaron bites his lip. "Are you- I think you're being sarcastic, but that's probably actually really true."

This is the part in her epic supernatural romance where Mabel is supposed to fling herself at him and promise to wait a thousand lifetimes if she has to.

"Well, other guys are stupid, and there's nobody else I like, so, no, I'm not gonna date anybody else." This is the nearest Mabel can manage. It's just that Dipper and Alexis, they made a lot of promises to each other. So many promises.

"I just need you to promise me one thing, Aaron, and I mean this. Promise to pee my name on everything. Every tree, every rock, every bush. From sea to shining sea."

"I'll do my best," Aaron says, crossing his heart. He touches her cheek. "Mabel, I know we're young and everything, and it's sort of crazy, but I just need to tell you that I love-"

She puts a finger over his lips and smiles softly. "I'll miss you, too."

"It's only temporary," he reassures her, after they kiss a little.

"I know."

The only problem is that these days, everything feels temporary to Mabel.

* * *

><p>Dipper and Mabel turn seventeen. They don't have a party.<p>

Dipper spends the night studying feverishly for the SAT, because if nothing else he can still beat Alexis's scores, maybe. If he has nothing else, he still has that.

Mabel works the late shift at the Barbeque Taco. It's a slow night, and she spends it leaning against the counter and scrolling through Instagram photos of get-togethers she might have been invited to, before all _this_.

She cuddles Waddles by the light of the full moon. The only voicemail she gets contains nothing but howling that is vaguely reminiscent of the Happy Birthday tune. It still makes her smile up at her ceiling in the dark.

* * *

><p>The week before senior year slams into action, the Internet informs Mabel that Alexis is dating somebody new. As much as she resolves to hate this unknown fellow, a local college student, she can't help feeling a warm glow when the texts from her old friends start pouring back in. This can still work. It's just that the sleepovers can never be at her house again, and that's okay.<p>

Mabel dances around the room and down the hall, but her stomach drops ominously when she passes Dipper's door. She can't _stand _that feeling. Reluctantly, she pushes open the door and waits for Dipper to pull out his earbuds. He's reading over his SAT scores. They are good, fantastically good, but now he is realizing that he'll never know if they are better than Alexis's scores because he'll probably never talk to her again.

"Soooooooooo, I'm going to the mall with Shannon and Melissa and everybody," Mabel says casually.

"Okay," Dipper says without looking up.

"And Alexis is gonna be there."

"Okay."

"And I know that might be sort of weird for you. That I'm hanging out with them again."

"It's fine. Have fun." His tone is completely dismissive.

"And I don't wanna hurt your feelings, bro, but I need more friends than just you."

His fingers tighten on the page. "I _get_ that."

"They just, they invited me and they haven't been inviting me to do anything lately, and I know they didn't mean anything by it, but it wasn't fair because _I _didn't break up with anybody!"

"Am I stopping you?" Dippers snaps, finally cutting his eyes from the book long enough to glare at Mabel.

"No," she says. She hurries from the room, slamming the door so he won't see her eyes fill up with tears.

Dipper stares at the score sheet unseeingly for several long minutes, because he _doesn't_ getit. He's never really needed more than one friend before.

In the car with Shannon and Alexis, laughing and singing along off-key to the radio, Mabel finds that the ache in her stomach is easy enough to push to the back of her mind. If he needs his space, she can give it to him.

Without Mabel constantly yanking open the blinds, Dipper starts to forget what the sunshine looks like. And so he stops missing it.

They never really mean to stop talking to each other. But it's easier that way.

* * *

><p><strong>What's this I hear? You're tired of angst? Need more fluff? You want Dipper and Mabel to return to Gravity Falls? You'd like to see more canon characters? Then stay tuned for the FOLLOWING CHAPTERS! :D :D<strong>

**I'm gonna go ahead and tell you now that Mabel and Aaron are NOT over, just in case anybody freaks out over that. :) I just needed to migrate him temporarily, you understand.**

**Sorry if updates are slowing down a bit. I'm still on break from school, and I'm challenging myself to write 1,000 words per day on an original novel I'm working on. Which is totally fun, but I'm trying not to let this story fall by the wayside either. Thanks for reading!**


	15. road trip

**Hey, all! I'm finally back! Sorry about this slow update, my mind is trying to drag me into this novel. Which I'm not opposed to, but I vow I shall finish this! :D This is the chapter I've been waiting forever to post anyway. I'm quite excited and I hope you enjoy it! :D**

* * *

><p>Senior year starts before they know it. Mr. and Mrs. Pines admit to themselves that as painful as it is to watch, it might be a good thing, this degree of separation between their children. After all, the brochures haven't been coming from the same colleges. It isn't as if they'll be just down the hall forever.<p>

"I need the car after school," Mabel says, grabbing a couple of Pop-tarts out of the toaster. "You'll have to take the bus." She doesn't explain that she's going to paint the Homecoming float. She doesn't beg him to come along and help, just to get out of the house for a change. She already knows he won't.

"Fine," Dipper says around his mouthful of cereal, not looking up from the newspaper. He doesn't show her the comic strip even though she'd laugh at it.

They think it is the only time they will speak to one another that day. They are mistaken.

* * *

><p>Stanford Pines just figured he had eaten a bad burrito. He's still waiting for that one magical belch to put out the fire in his chest when he realizes, holy crap, he's dying, isn't he? This is it. This is the big one.<p>

"Soos," he manages, clutching the counter with one hand and his heart with the other. He waves wildly until he catches the big fellow's attention across the Mystery Shack.

"That's some frantic gesturing you've got going on there, Mr. Pines," Soos says, hurrying over. "Everything okay?"

Stan holds up a hand, trying to find a way to speak through the pain.

"Oh, I see what's happening here! I got you. Five words. No-" Soos hesitates as Stan slices a single finger across his throat in a frantic motion. "Only one. Is it a movie? You went out of order, dude."

Stan sinks to the floor.

"Titanic?"

"I'm dying," Stan whispers.

Soos shakes his head. "Dude, no hints. You aren't supposed to talk."

This is what his obituary will say. He croaked playing charades with a freakin' moron.

Wendy pushes past the swinging door and gasps, immediately dropping an assortment of bobble-headed moose. "Oh my gosh, Soos! Call 911 right now!"

Soos screams at a pitch only dogs can hear.

* * *

><p>"Dipper!" Mabel's face is flushed as she grabs her brother by his backpack straps and spins him away from his open locker after second period. He's confused, because he thought he gave her the keys and why else would she approach him at school? He shifts his eyes to see if any of the girls are with her. They are trying to be nice to him again, but it's a pitying, false niceness, and he just <em>can't <em>today.

"Did you get a text from Mom?" Mabel demands.

Dipper glances down at his phone. "Yeah, but I haven't-"

"Grunkle Stan had a heart attack," she interrupts, voice wavering.

He sucks in air. "Oh my gosh. Is he-"

"He's in the hospital, last they heard. But they don't know if… What are we gonna do?" Mabel grabs Dipper's shoulder and shakes him. "WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO?"

Dipper checks the watch on his trembling wrist. "We can be there by six tonight. Five if we speed. You put gas in the car last time you drove, right?"

Mabel nods feebly.

"Okay, let's leave straight from here. Going home would put us back half an hour. Mom and Dad can catch up."

Mabel instinctively trusts Dipper's math. She hurriedly packs her backpack with essential snacks and art supplies. Dipper shoves his notes in his backpack and wonders feverishly if he'll be able to make up his American Government test at a later date. Then he mentally hits himself for caring when the world could be ending, when Grunkle Stan could be- he could be-

Dipper hesitates for a moment, then rummages around for Journal #3 at the bottom of his locker. He clutches it to his chest. Hopefully it won't come to this, but there's no way of knowing.

The bell rings to begin third period. Mabel stands at the end of the emptying hallway, waiting for him. She looks small and tired, and for the first time in months he feels an impulse to embrace her.

And then she opens her mouth and ruins it. "Will you hurry _up already_?" She pushes open a side door and sets off the fire alarm, prompting Dipper to run after her, cursing under his breath.

"I was looking at traffic conditions!" Dipper snaps, zooming in on the map on his phone. "80 Highway's all backed up so I was thinking we could take the back roads up a ways to-" He glances up and sees Mabel climbing in the driver's seat. "Hey, what do you think you're doing? Mabel, I _need _to drive." Everything else is falling apart; he needs to be behind the wheel.

She huffs. "Then give me the phone, I'll navigate."

"No, you're terrible at directions!" Mabel doesn't always know left from right and frequently directs with 'turn by the prettiest tree.'

"Dipper, you _cannot_ drive and navigate at the same time! You are _such _a control freak!" Mabel screams.

"You drive like a _maniac_!"

"I will get us there faster, and you _know_ that's what we need right now!" Mabel punches the horn. Dipper winces, waiting for the principal to come out of nowhere and drag them back into class. "Get in or go home, bro-bro!"

He climbs into the passenger seat and slams the door.

* * *

><p>Two hours pass and they alternate between bickering and sitting in terrified silence. Mabel goes seven miles over the speed limit (as fast as she can without Dipper panicking, especially after it starts to rain) and tries to blast the radio, but Dipper keeps muting it, watching his phone like a hawk for someone Oregon-side to answer one of their panicked texts or calls. Nothing. He's not convinced that no news is good news.<p>

"I haven't talked to any of them in ages." Dipper spent the summer in a fog of misery too thick to even consider traveling. He realizes he isn't even entirely sure what Mabel did all summer. She worked, right?

"I called him in June, just to say we weren't coming," Mabel says. "He was all pretending not to be sad about it. You know how he does that?"

Dipper watches the raindrops trail back along his window. "I didn't even call," he says.

* * *

><p>Mabel pulls off at the nearest ramp and skids into a gas station parking lot.<p>

"We can't afford to lose a moment!" she cries. "Pee and snacks! Two minutes! On the double, soldier!" Mabel runs inside without an umbrella, flinching against the pelting raindrops. Dipper follows her in more slowly, his whole body still quivering with anxiety. He stops in front of the wide display of mini-donuts. Alexis likes the chocolate ones best. His stomach hurts.

Mabel runs out of the bathroom, shoving the keys into Dipper's hand as she fiddles with her phone. "You drive go go go I got a message, drive, let's go!" They climb back into the van, still dripping wet, but before Dipper can put it into drive, Mabel turns on speakerphone.

"_Everything's fine_," Wendy's voice crackles on the voicemail message. "_I am really sorry I couldn't get through to you guys sooner, I think you were out of reception or something. But Stan's totally okay. They just want to keep him overnight for observation. I'll stay with him until_-"

"_Give me that_," a gruff voice cuts her off abruptly. "_I'm fine, kiddos, calm the heck down. You guys sound completely crazy on the phone. Don't do anything stupid. Don't kill yourselves getting here, I mean. I'm gonna bust out of this crappy hospital tonight, anyway_."

Dipper puts his face down on the steering wheel.

"_You aren't busting anywhere_," Wendy snaps as the message continues. "_Touch that IV again, and I swear to God I will have Soos sit on you_."

"_Was that a threat?_"

"You stupid old man!" Mabel screams as though he can hear her through the recording. "You stupid, ugly old man, you scared the pee out of us! Oh my gosh!" She suddenly lets out a noise halfway between a sob and a snort of laughter. "Look at this! I'm crying and laughing at the same time. Dipperrrrr. Do you hear this? What's happening to meeeee?"

Mabel wails and fans her watering eyes, giggling uncontrollably. She tilts her head to try to see Dipper's face under his arms. His shoulders are shaking. "What about you? Are you laughing or crying?"

"I don't know," Dipper says into the steering wheel. He's mostly crying.

"I think- I think I'm laughing," Mabel concludes, then lowers her head to her knees and starts sobbing.

After a few minutes, Dipper raises his head and actually does laugh, a little.

"What are we _doing?_" he asks aloud, breaking the silence between them. "This was the dumbest thing."

Mabel giggles, too, wiping her face. "Dumber than dumb, dumbface."

They mean the spontaneous, school-skipping road trip. But they also mean the silence. The silence was pretty stupid, too.

"We probably should have told Mom and Dad. Oh man, they're gonna kill us when we get home."

"We'll definitely be grounded," Mabel echoes.

"We're already three hours out and…" Dipper shrugs. "I couldn't make it back for my test now, anyway, sooo…"

"I need to go to Gravity Falls," Mabel says simply.

He starts the car. The wipers flick water from the windshield. "Me too."

* * *

><p>"Slug bug red!" Mabel cries, punching Dipper's arm. He shoves her back even though that's against the rules of slug bug. She's already cheated plenty at the alphabet game. "Dipper, Dipper, Dipper, oh my gosh, there's the <em>sign! <em>The sign, Dipper, the two miles to Gravity Falls sign! Did you see it? Did you see the sign? And there's the tree that looks like it's flipping you off!"

"That means this is a gnome crossing," Dipper says, pointing out the other window. The little creature bares its teeth when he waves.

"Get ready for the potholes!"

They brace themselves, and Mabel yells to hear the funny vibrations in her voice.

Dipper realizes, in that moment, that he's been spending an awful lot of time missing the wrong person.

* * *

><p><strong>*Sniffles* Aaaahhhhhhhhhhh I have to know, were any of you legit scared for Stan's life? This is important for my author notes. The Mystery Twins are finally back in Gravity Falls! Stay tuned for the excited reunions! :D Reviews will help me remember where I am in this story and thusly help me update sooner! Don't review and... Soos will sit on you!<strong>

**That's not a threat. It's a promise. :)**


	16. two percent

**Once upon a time, there was a Chapter 16 that was a much more reasonable length and got posted within a reasonable amount of time. The section breaks weren't weird and disjointed, every character got a perfect amount of screen time, every relationship was fully and deeply explored, and no reader was disappointed by the content in the slightest.**

**But alas, this is not that chapter.**

_**I'm**_** a little disappointed with the amount of time I've spent pouring over it and still not achieving a perfect balance of things. But hopefully it's just that I've been so focused on everything wrong with it that I've lost sight of the good stuff. So I'm posting anyway because the show must go on, right?**

**In other news, I **_**had **_**been using this story to procrastinate writing my novel. Now I've written five chapters of the novel, and I'm using it to procrastinate updating this. Exciting, right? No? Okay, here's the thing you came for. :)**

* * *

><p>Dipper can tell from the scent of the air in the hospital that it's haunted, but that's a problem for another time. They make their way down the hall to Stan's room and knock quietly, in case he's sleeping.<p>

"And how do you two know Mr. Pines?" Wendy comes out and stands in the doorway with her arms folded across her chest, eyes narrowed suspiciously, blocking their way into the hospital room. "I don't recognize or comprehend who you guys are at all."

"_It's us, Wendy!_" Mabel screams, distressed. "Dipper and Mabel Pines!" She grabs Wendy's shoulders and shakes her so hard that the earflaps of her hat create a bit of a breeze. "We used to come here in the summer and you were our _best friend in the entire world, Wendy!_"

Wendy shoves her away playfully. "I'm messing with you! Remember how that's a thing I do, like, constantly?"

Mabel squeals and attacks her with hugs, insisting she knew it was a prank from the beginning.

Dipper hugs Wendy, too, and he's not quite sure why he was expecting her to still tower over him. She was at eye-level with Mabel, after all, and he had beat Mabel for the Alpha Twin Superior Height when they were fifteen.

"Daaaaang, somebody hit you guys with the puberty stick!" Wendy says with a laugh, glancing up at Dipper as she drags the twins into the room. "Soos, do you see this?!"

"You have both blossomed into radiant flowers," Soos says, embracing the twins and wiping away stray tears. It's been a rollercoaster of a day for him, too.

"What gives? Why's everybody emoting out there?" Stan growls. Dipper and Mabel hurry to his side, and a smile threatens to crack his gruff disapproval of the entire scene. "Look at you clowns. All grown up. I didn't authorize this."

Mabel launches herself onto Stan's bed and squeezes his neck. "Grunkle Stan! You big jerk, I thought you were gonna _die!_"

Soos's lip trembles.

"Of course I wasn't gonna die," Stan snaps. "If everybody would _quit overreacting._ I hope you guys didn't miss anything important to get here."

"Nothing, just school," Mabel says. "Look, I got my braces off! Waddles had his fifth birthday! I'm dating a werewolf! Man, I have so much to tell you!"

"Shut up for a second and let me hug your brother."

Dipper and Stan haven't always gotten along, and there have been some really awful moments between them. Dipper _swears_ this won't be one of them.

"How are you feeling, Grunkle Stan?" he asks, scuffing a toe on the tile.

"I stared into the abyss." Stan whispers a little too loudly, eyes glazing over. "And I teetered on the precipice. And there was some part of me that longed to take that final plunge. Just to feel the rush, you know?"

Soos starts to sob into his hands.

"So… a little better, then?" Dipper asks lamely.

"It could have _happened!_" Soos's voice hitches. "Mr. _Pines_-"

"No, no, shhh, Soos, it didn't. Everything's okay." Wendy pats his arm. Her voice is gentle but also very, very tired, as if she's been repeating this stuff for hours on end. Dipper and Mabel exchange a worried look.

"Melody's driving in tonight. That should help with… you know," Wendy murmurs to Dipper. She stifles a yawn into the crook of her elbow.

"Coffee time?" he asks.

"How'd you know? Y'know, there's food in the gift shop downstairs," Wendy says. "Also a poltergeist. I think it's a poltergeist, but sort of more transparent? You might want to check the journal thing."

"Yeah, good plan."

Dipper catches Mabel's eye and jerks his head towards Wendy. She nods and pulls up a chair beside Stan's bed and mouths, _I got these two, _in response, motioning to Stan and Soos. Somehow, even splitting up, they feel much more in sync than they have the past few months.

"We're gonna have you fixed up in no time," Mabel says loudly as Dipper and Wendy head downstairs.

"This werewolf you're dating… is this a thing happening in your imagination or in real actual life?" Stan asks warily.

"Real life."

He groans. "Soos, load my shotgun."

"BITE YOUR TONGUE! You just have to get to know him, okay? Did you know he'd never been in a human grocery story before he met me! Crazy, right? And his eyes are the most incredible green!"

"Like emeralds?" Soos asks.

"Think greener!"

"Like recycling?"

Stan scrubs his hands over his face. A nurse pokes her head in.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart, but Mr. Pines is supposed to be resting. He's been suffering from a bit of _insomnia_." Her tone makes the word mean _stubbornness overload. _Stan considers sacrificing his dignity to wet the bed, just to teach her to mind her own business.

"Of course I can't sleep, it's like a morgue in here," Stan growls when the nurse is gone.

"Awww, Grunkle Stan! You know, Dipper used to be really scared of the dark, before we came here. But I have a little lullaby I would sing when he couldn't sleep."

"Whoop de doozle. This oughta be fun."

Mabel clears her throat and pats his hand. She starts to sing in a voice he remembers being a lot more little girlish.

_Lullaby and goodnight, sweet little Grunkle (that part used to say Dipper)_

_Don't be afraid to close your eyes_

_The darkness doesn't bite_

_Close your eyes, hug the dark, hug the silence and peace_

_Let it go, close your eyes, it doesn't hurt to sleep._

Stan grips his hospital sheets in white knuckles, chest heaving, eyes wider than ever.

"Aren't you relaxed?"

"For God's sake, talk about the werewolf again! I must know more about his beautiful eyes!" Stan exclaims. Death will _not_ claim him today.

Mabel happily obliges.

* * *

><p>"I just don't know what the future holds for us! I mean, he's a pack animal! And I would never, ever ask him to give that up. I mean, family's such a huge part of who you <em>are<em>. You know what I mean?"

"Of course I do," Stan says, sitting up in bed and quite invested in this conversation. "But if you really, really love him, you gotta tell him so. Let him decide if he wants to stay or go. Life is short, Mabel. You're walking along, mopping the floor, ruling the black market, and next thing you know your ticker is hooked up to this thing in the wall and it's beeping and you can't make it shut up and you'd do anything to hold her hand and tell her what you meant to say. Anything."

Soos abruptly stops his latest fit of crying. He stands up. "You're right, Mr. Pines. You're always right about everything," he says, pulling a fist to his chest dramatically. He adjusts his baseball cap and walks out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

"Well, it's about time one of you noticed," Stan says.

* * *

><p>Wendy and Dipper grab cheap, watered-down coffee in the hospital shop, and they try to discern which magical creature's pee its taste most resembles.<p>

"So, college? Everything it's cracked up to be?" Dipper takes a sip and forces himself to swallow. Wendy laughs at his grimace.

"I was only there for a year. Turns out, the ol' fam can't function without me. Let me tell you something, it's both really flattering and really terrifying to know the world will fall apart when you leave." There's a hint of wistfulness behind her smirk.

"Well, I'm really glad you were here. For Stan and everything. I'm sure he never tells you himself, but he's crazy about you."

"Yeah, yeah." Wendy rolls her eyes. "I know."

Dipper cuts his apple tart down the middle and puts half of it on a napkin in front of her. He's not sweating. Or hyperventilating. Or squirming in his seat like he's got a rash. "Okay, man," Wendy finally blurts out. "Let me see the forehead. I'm not sure if I'm buying that it's really you."

"You're gonna be so disappointed," Dipper says, sweeping his hair back to reveal the faintest shadow of the dots that used to be the bane of his existence.

Wendy gasps, gesturing to his face in mock horror. "Seriously? When did _this_ happen? What am I even supposed to call you now, dude?" Dipper opens his mouth, but she waves him off. "Don't answer that- man, if you aren't a freak with me anymore, I don't even know what to do with myself."

Dipper laughs. Wendy pulls off her wool cap and shakes out a short red pixie cut that hadn't been visible before. "Oh yeah, I guess I've changed a little bit, too."

"It's a good look for you," Dipper says. "Not freakish."

Wendy rolls her eyes again. "Yeah, it was sort of a necessity. I dyed my hair so many times that it, like, fried and fell out. Nasty stuff." She laughs at herself. "It was sort of an addiction. Every time I went through a break-up, I would change my hair color. Tambry was about to send me to rehab."

Dipper laughs too, uncomfortably, rubbing a little patch of stubble on his chin. "Maybe I should give that a shot." He gestures to his own hair, rumpled from the long car and his anxious hands running through it. "The hair dye, I mean. Not the rehab."

"Oh, don't tell me you've been doing the whole 'serial dating' thing," Wendy pretends to gasp. "High school drama is the worst. _Dish. Now._"

"No, it's not like that… I just- just dated this one girl for, like, a year and a half…" Dipper taps his fingers together. "Didn't end that well."

He wasn't gonna do this. Nope.

"Ouch," Wendy says, suddenly somber because now that she's thinking about it, she isn't sure she's ever actually seen anyone for that long. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I ended it," Dipper clarifies quickly. "I mean I started…the end. Nothing was ever good enough for her. And she used to get jealous of Mabel sometimes, which was weird."

Wendy flinches. "Yuck."

"But it made sense at the time, you know?"

"Yup. Those things always do."

"I'm glad it's over. I mean, I didn't realize know how much of my time she'd been taking. Mabel doesn't get it. She thinks I've been depressed. But it's been really good to just take a step back from… uh, from that whole scene. Seeing people. Doing… so much stuff. I've been getting a lot of studying done. Lots of important… studying…"

Dipper trails off. It is not until this moment, with his stomach full of stale apple tart and Wendy blinking at him with just a little too much understanding in her eyes that he's realized Mabel knew what she was talking about. He has been _so_ incredibly depressed.

"Oh," he says lamely.

Wendy nods knowingly. "_There_ it is."

"Sorry." That seems like the thing to say.

She blows his apology off. "Dude, seriously, I've been there. The _stories_ I could tell you. Like, okay, when I first left school, my boyfriend said he would wait for me, and I believed him. I mean, this guy couldn't even wait for Pizza Rolls to come out of the microwave, and I _believed_ him." She snorts bitterly, and Dipper cautiously laughs along with her. "It doesn't matter, though."

"Of course it does."

Wendy hesitates, then shakes her head. "I've seriously had a buttload of people come and go in my life. Not just guys, I mean. But, like, the thing is, ninety-eight percent of the people I thought I couldn't live without, I found out I really, _really_ can."

Dipper stares down into the foam cup. "What about the other two percent?"

"You figure out who they are. The people you gotta hold onto. People you'd drop everything and drive eight hours to see, in case you had to raise them from the dead."

Dipper freezes, the color draining from his face. His backpack feels massively heavy with the weight of Journal number 3.

"Am I wrong?" Wendy asks, eyebrow lifted dangerously.

She's not. The lights flicker in the little restaurant.

Dipper swallows. He still feels kind of weird from crying in the car with Mabel, like his head was a suitcase he'd managed to cram a monstrous amount of feelings into, and now that he's unzipped it he can't fold all the emotions back in again.

On the plus side, now the term 'baggage' makes a lot more sense.

"Dude, I'm the last person who's gonna give you an ethics lecture about zombification," Wendy continues more quietly. "The part that actually freaks me out is that I'm pretty sure you didn't tell Mabel what was going through your mind. And I'm pretty sure she didn't guess it, either, and that's not normal for you guys."

"It's been weird lately," Dipper admits. "She was really good friends with Mabel and it's just been… messed up. But it won't be anymore."

"Yeah, promise me something. You do not _ever_ stop talking to that precious girl, okay? You aren't gonna find another Mabel."

"I promise I won't," he says earnestly. "She's… she's my two percent, too."

"In that case, you're gonna be fine, man." Wendy fake-punches his cheek, grinning.

Dipper nods. "You too. Sorry that boys are so terrible."

"You're telling me," Wendy snorts. "I think I'm gonna try girls for a while."

She flips her hair casually and watches out of the corner of her eye as Dipper chokes on his coffee. He recovers within seconds.

"That's… that's cool, Wendy."

Wendy laughs and slugs him in the arm, hard, and after another cautious moment, he breaks into a grin, too.

"Oh, you're messing with me."

"I'm messing with you," Wendy echoes. She tilts her head when she smiles.

The lights flicker again in the restaurant, ominously.

"We should take care of that," Dipper says.

Wendy's chair screeches when she pushes it back. "Let's do."

* * *

><p>Melody walks into the hospital room to find Dipper and Wendy covered in green slime and a sprinkling of blood. Mabel is covered in glitter, but she can't tell if it's more or less glitter than usual. There's definitely more glitter on Stan than on a typical day.<p>

"Bad timing?" Melody asks.

"Perfect timing," Wendy says.

Melody digs into her purse. "I brought animal crackers and the soundtrack of Classic Arcade Game Sounds. Was there anything else you needed, Soos?"

"Yeah, one more thing really quick." Soos drops onto one knee in the middle of the linoleum hospital floor. "So today I was totally thinking about how I love you just a crazy lot, and then a wise old sage told me I'd be a nincompoop not to tell you I can't live without you and well, would you do me the honor, dude?"

She gasps as he ties a gummy worm around her finger.

"Of being my wife, like, for the rest of our lives. Did I say that part?"

Melody's eyes well up with tears. "Oh, Soos!"

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes!"

"Yesssssss!" Soos pumps his fist in the air and then kisses Melody with gusto. Wendy and Dipper and Mabel cheer, and Mabel wraps her arms around Grunkle Stan's neck and kisses his stubbly old man cheek. He harrumphs.

"Yeah, yeah, this is great and everything. Celebrating life in an old guy's death chamber. Yeah, carry on, don't worry about me."

They keep kissing. Wendy snaps picture after picture on her cell phone. Mabel is already mapping out the page in her scrapbook.

* * *

><p>"We're gonna head back to the Shack and try to catch a little sleep. We can probably stay through Sunday before we've gotta go face Mom and Dad."<p>

"You guys are coming back next summer, right?" Wendy asks, hugging Mabel and then Dipper.

"If we aren't still grounded," Dipper says into her shoulder.

"Are you kidding, Wendy? We aren't gonna miss the wedding for the world!" Mabel cries.

Wendy grabs Dipper's shoulders and pushes him back, pointing to her tight-lipped expression. "This is my serious face. I'm not even joking. Come back, okay?"

"Okay," he says.

* * *

><p>The sun is long set when they walk into the Mystery Shack gift shop for the first time in three years. Dipper leans against the counter and absently flicks a bobble-headed moose.<p>

"Don't," Mabel says abruptly. "Not yet, I mean."

Dipper blinks at her. "Don't what?"

Mabel jerks her head toward the chair behind the counter. "You're not ready, bro-bro."

"Oh, yeah, no. She isn't- No way. _Definitely_ not ready for that," Dipper reassures her.

Mabel smiles almost shyly. It's the first bit of advice she's offered since they started talking again. "Sorry if that was none of my business."

"No, it's totally okay. Thanks," Dipper says.

They are old enough to stop pretending they aren't each other's business.

* * *

><p>Grunkle Stan murmurs one word to Wendy the moment the twins leave the room.<p>

"Seriously?" His eyebrow quirks mischievously.

Wendy turns her lingering gaze from the door, flushing, and reaches for a plug in the wall by Stan's hospital bed. "I can unplug your heart, old man."

"That's the lamp, sweetheart, but I admire your vain threats." Stan laughs. Wendy laughs with him, then yanks on the plug and plunges the room into darkness.

* * *

><p><strong>Well, I suppose I'm out of the closet about my preferred ship now. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Come at me, fandom! Don't worry, Dipper and Mabel's sibling relationship is still the point, and if I'm ever gonna get seriously shippy I'll take it to a different story. Because let's be honest, what WenDip fan made it through 16 chapters of Alexis? Not many, I'm pretty dang sure.<strong>

**I'll be honest, the next update will probably take more than a week. I'll try to have one up before the next episode airs, but I don't wanna lead you readers on, either. School is knocking me down for the count. I WILL FINISH, THOUGH. However long it takes. Whatever giants I must slay along the way. This is my promise to you all. Thanks once again for all your views and reviews- 12 last chapter! That's so many! I'm deeply touched. :)**


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